i would like to end with my most sincere thank you. most sincere. that's very strong for me. my most sincere for convening us and i am completely serious this is a gift to all of us and to the women of america. thank you very much. [applause] >> if anyone has any questions they would like to ask. ..

>> can you talk about the issue of money and reaching out to those who never thought that they should run? >> we have found an research has shown that women in the same way he went, they raise money at comparable rates to men in comparable races. but what we have heard over and over again, and i think all of us who do any kind of work in training women to run for office, this issue of stepping up and asking for money for yourself is a tough one. we know that women come from, when they run for office, 10 to come from professions that are

not as money -- their networks are not as much. that has presented a challenge. but we do know that they can do it, and they need to learn i'm a basically to feel comfortable doing that kind of asking. and asking not for the pta or the church or synagogue, or some other candidate, but for themselves. i have talked to women is a well, i can't ask for that money. and i said you're not asking for it, so you can redo your kitchen or to a vacation. you're asking for so that you can go state legislature, to washington, d.c. in order to represent the interests of your constituents and their interest when you're elected. so that's an important hurdle i think a lot of women. but i think it really speaks to the issue that we see and we hear this from women and we have seen this in a research as well, that women are in state legislatures fuel that it was harder for them to raise the money than their male colleagues

feel it was for themselves. that's why i brought up the point of being entrepreneurial. think about a business, but when you're a candidate you want a business. you are, you're the product that has to be marketed. to to be entrepreneur you need to start off with capital. and in politics that capital is that pipeline, the money started on. that's why it's important have women like this, any leadership forum like this, they've already broken into it to some degree. then you can start building the financial pipeline because as we all know, money runs politics. you can be the best candidate but if you're underfunded, people don't think your cities. you don't have the ability to have the same presence at the others. and repetition creates reality. when you have money you can go out there and create whatever narrative you want or combat and your opponent and congress often times what to do is they'll have to go to send out mass mailings as part of, with certain rules

now where you can only get within 90 days, there's a plaque at perry because people recognize it's unfair, disadvantaged people running against incumbents. but mass mailings like that, they use it as an intimidation package. this person has got, they just than $100,000 on the mailer and i only have, i barely have enough money to fall. it's important to be entrepreneurial and go into that and decide to run, that that mind frame and to be apologetic. unapologetic for what you believe in and believe you are worth so people can make investment in you as a candidate. >> let me just add because people like to hear from different sources. i work at the kennedy school. i teach and at harvard. and they have done very important research on the reluctance of women to negotiate, and as soon come on income it's like this. the gender gap but as soon as

you tell them well, you can negotiate when you take this test $3, you know, doing a maze in the lab, you know, you could ask for more and negotiate for more, but it will go to someone who needs it, the gender gap disappears. so if you can tell women, go out and ask only because you're asking for it for this cause, you know, it's going to come to you as a political leader, but it will be for the cause that you care about. >> an important aspect of what you are really getting at is that to ask, you're asking people. the money is attached to people and not as one has the same level of access in the beginning to the same kind of people with money, right? so part of the leadership department process is also really around how do we expand our ecosystem, how do we expand our networks? that we have access to the people to ask in a way, in

addition to actually developing the skills and the wherewithal to do it. >> that's great. that's a very good point but i'd like to get to one of our online questions now. this is probably best directed to you. is political parity working with any other bipartisan group such as no labels.org which has a different focus but might have some common areas of interest such as getting people from different parties to work together? >> oh, we're so interested in building this collaboration. i just met with two women have joined the leadership team, and i'm not speaking of their affiliation as joining, i mean, their organization can but i will tell you in your bios you will discover that one of them is ahead of the christian coalition and another one is janice kraus, as concerned women of america. i don't know if you can get farther right. i guess you can fall off -- [inaudible] [laughter]

>> i mean, i'm all for talking to no label. the point we will make women have that conversation is, i don't care what else you disagree on. do you want to increase the number of women in politics. i have worked internationally a locked, and two different women from, who were like in the '70s told me, this is like years apart tell me this, that, they were in the group that broke in, the year of the woman, like 12%. they said as the number increased to 20 to 30 for, finally, 35, 40, that they themselves, the same women, they said they dressed, i acted, i spoke, i voted differently as that number increased. very hard to judge when you're at 60%, judy, how women are

ultimately going to break through. that's why we have this year how they're ultimately going to break through the gridlock. that's why we have this be a thank you. we have another question that came in online. i'd like to direct this with the gloria, if she would be kind enough to respond. it says, why is it that even countries that are not as prosperous as america have more women in office? what are the stumbling blocks? >> well, we know the stumbling blocks for women running commentary, are that they are not asked, and perhaps in many other countries where women are on the front lines of a lot of social, what's happening there, put in positions where they know that they need to run. so they are not asked enough. i think going to your question, there is an institutional

perception in both parties that women are right out of the gate not as viable as men, that they won't be able to raise the money the way men will be able to raise the money. so we have very serious institutional blockades in place for women in this country, and that's exacerbated even more for women of color. so, you know, it almost doubles the bodies, doubles against women of color. so those are some of the most concrete stumbling blocks i think that we see in this country. [inaudible] >> countries have quota. >> there are 100 countries in the world that have a quarter of some sort. sometimes it's constitutional, sometimes it's in the electoral law. sometimes it's in a political party. the critical thing is in the political part if you have a quota, that one-third, for example, at least one-third have to be women, it needs to be separate.

in other words, you have to take one out of this top three have to be a woman, they want out of the next three, et cetera. if you just a 30% you put the women at the bottom. >> yes? >> i was also just going to add that one of the things that has hurt women in this country, particularly looking at the state legislative level have been term limits. and term limits were something that was instituted, and one of the goals of term limits to our at least one of the professed goals of term limits was we're going to get rid of those incumbents and then we would create a lot of open seats and we would see women come flooding in. and, in fact, what happens is we term limited in about 15 states, and the women that term limited just like men but the recruitment process did not change. and so the same old, same old was getting recruited, which did not include women. and that has really hurt us.

so there is some structural things, some advantages in other countries like quotas that have helped women, but some structural things that happen here in united states that have hurt women. >> i just wanted to add, i think this is a curious thing. when we say other countries, many other reasons that other countries have a larger proportion of women is because they have either a party requirement for a quota, or they have 30% or 40% constitutional requirement here people, a lot and universities we say well, oh, well, that explains it. as if, as if gender were not significant. what we need to understand is 100 other countries represent the incredible value of women participation, and so they make it the law. we are a meritocracy. we will never do that so it is us. we have to make that happen. we're never going to get that, that requirement here.

but it is the statement of the value of what we contribute, not it's taken care of so forget about it. >> if i could add to that, i think in it's an issue of political will. an issue of political will. so our country unlike others, mary, has not convinced that political will. so what we have to do is mechanism like this to create the momentum, to create the energy, to create a collaboration to make that will become a reality. and it does boil down to the political will. the value agenda cannot recognize this country get. >> i would like to thank -- it's not apparent to our roundtable participants, the members who came so far, in many cases to be with us today to this historic announcement. thank you all for coming. and would you like the last word? >> always, always.

[laughter] i think i'm going to repeat what i said at the beginning, that it's one of the differences, again, research shows, i think the difference is is if you ask women and a few ask men about why they run, men will say, they say very lofty things. you know? i knew when i was 10 at night, you know, i could be a leader. or i've always had this dream, why not the best? you know? you remember those slogans? and they will talk about why they can do such a good job. women have a whole different narrative. and they will say i have a child with diabetes, you know? you know how little money is going into childhood diabetes? and i worked in a homeless shelter for my church, so we can crack this nut. we can solve this. and so, i think of this not in

terms of all, go women. i think of this as in terms of the united states of america. and the whole world looks at us. and when they see us dating him when they see the dropout rate in our schools. the problems we have with crime, that becomes, that has ripple effects around the world. we can do better than that. we can. and it's not about quota. we are allergic to quotas. but it is about finding other ways. i'm so proud of the people here who have joined in together. thank you, thank you, thank you. and thank you to our media friends for being with us. thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

>> [inaudible conversations] >> as this if it comes to close up local news to pass on to today. texas governor rick perry announcing that he is dropping out of the race for president. he threw his support that former house beeker newt gingrich. mr. gingrich released this statement upon the announcement. he says in part i am humbled and honored to have the support of my friend rick perry. is selflessness is yet another demonstration of his deep sense of citizenship and commitment to

the cost of limited government, historic american values and greater freedom for every american. i asked the support of governor perry to look at my record thousand the budget, cutting speed and reformed welfare and enacting pro-growth policies to create millions of new jobs and humbly ask for their vote, uncle. all of this of course a softer light holds their primary this coming saturday. will have coverage of the results here on c-span that works. president obama in the meantime has a couple of hits on the calendar today. 

>> the conspirators plan was to have a street lined with their guys, part of them would create a distraction so that any police escort would be drawn away, and then the rest would close in for the kill and murder abraham lincoln in the carriage of his carbine in 1861, allan pinkerton uncovers evidence of a possible plot to kill the president elect. saturday at 6 p.m. eastern on american history tv disrupting the baltimore plot. also the origins of the cold war on lectures in history with college of the ozarks professor david on saturday night at 8 p.m. on the presidency, fdr's inner circle of military intelligence and diplomatic advisers and the role in fighting a world where. american history tv this weekend on c-span3.

>> israeli author and activist david grossman spoke at the brookings institution here in washington last month about his latest novel. it touches on his' experience facing modern-day israel. this is about an hour. >> the deals that have been brokered and broken. and focus instead on the human essence at the most intimate personal level of what israelis often called with more understatement the situation. and one way to do that is to listen to a novelist, a poet, and a qualification that is actually more pertinent to the subject and my immunity be a parent, a writer of stories for children. david grossman is all of those things, and he is much more.

his latest book, available in english, "to the end of the land" has little to do, at least explicitly with the heavy policy issues that dominate the headlines, and for that matter, dominate the agenda of a conference like this one. but david's novel has a great deal to say that is both profound and poignant about individual human beings. and in particular, a mother, her husband, her lover, her sons, and how they cope with the situation. and the effects of the endless conflict and the endless danger that they live with throughout their lives and the effects in particular on their own humanity and on the sole of their nation. so we welcome david and his wife, whom i think is right over

there. and we thank their friend and our friend, leon wieseltier, the literary editor of "the new republic" for leading us in a conversation that i can absolutely guarantee you will greatly enrich the u.s.-israel dialogue that is something of the sublime foremast done so much to go over these past ages. so without i will ask david and leon to come on up and talk a bit to each other and with us. [applause] >> good evening. strobe is right. they are said before you two men who are not strategists or generals or spymasters or

politicians or foreign policy analysts, but as you can tell from the fact that we are not wearing ties we are to humanis humanists. and unlikely, there are many people who can't imagine that there is a literary, perspective, or literature can cast light upon some of the hardest and most excruciating decisions that policymakers have to make him especially in this context. but we're going to premise our conversation tonight on the us on to that, in fact, there is some light that a literary standpoint or an imagined standpoint contest on the subject that we been talking about all day. one way to think about making peace is to think of it as an act of imagination. nobody makes peace unless they have the imagination to understand the predicament of people who are not themselves and not only their predicament, nobody would make peace unless they could imagine, unless they

to think beyond their circumstances, and spiritually, imaginatively by means of resources not, not a political resources but of inner resources to imagine a different reality and accept that reality as a direction to move towards. so the first question i'm going to ask my beloved friend is to talk a little bit about, i mean, you are going to write about your society. you don't write overtly political novels but you're right about your society, and you're deeply engaged in its internal conflicts, external conflicts. and to talk all a bit about how you see your role as a writer and what light you think a writer can cast upon the subjects at extremely under the rate people you're talking about. >> shalom, good evening. i'm very glad to be here.

thanks to the forum for their generosity, very enhancing initiative. i disagree, i do not think there is a role of the writer. i think writer has only one role, to write a good story. and there are many good writers in israel who absolutely do not tackle reality directly. because of various reasons. i belong to quite a small group of riders, who actually write about the situation but i think it's something very personal. i take reality very personally. and i want to understand why we live in the circumstances that we live. and what are the effects of such reality on our lives, and how they manifest themselves.

all layers of life. in my last novel, to be published, that was published in english, "to the end of the land," i tried to show how this situation that strobe mentioned before, when we say situation in hebrew, we say -- but by saying so, we actually put together solely things, you know, the wars, the endless wars and occupation and terror. and existential fear. and also a kind of a deceit within this password that we have chosen because in hebrew, when you hebrew, it indicates something stable. as if, you know, almost as if something without any variation,

static, yes. why it's a kind of constant bleeding of modern century. there's nothing stable, and there is nothing when you say, it is itself from heaven, you know, create as if no one has actually situated it, yes? in hebrew, yes? you know yes, we found ourselves in this impossible situation, as if no one has decided, just to give a small example, or a big example. to put settlements in certain places that will obstacle or maybe prevent any future sensible border, or a political compromise. i wanted to show how this very charged situation, how it affects the life of one family.

i am fascinated by families. not less than i fascinated by myself, the situation, even more i can say. i always think that the greatest moments of mankind, they have not take care on the battlefield or in corridors of parliament or policies, but rather in teaching. and inventors and in rooms of children. and i tried to show exactly what happened in all these rooms that are so heavily influenced by the situation. for many years i was unable to ride such a story, even though in the beginning of my career i like to say this word, it sounds wonderful, career. no one ever sees career about the word of the writer. in america it goes well. then i wrote about the big issues of us, the occupation or

the shah, a huge heavy questions of our existence as jews and as israelis. and then i wrote the yellow wind which was kind of a collection about occupation. and then i felt that unless i find the language to describe the situation, and the language that will be given me would be a new one that still maintains some freshness, i will not really right fiction or prose about it. i felt i cannot do it. i cannot, you know, repeat what others have said and what i have said. and for several years, i wrote other books and other stories which for me was not less important.

we are so deprived because of this situation, so deprived we don't have a chance to write about the things that are really major, you know? men and woman, love,, raising up of children, all those important questions that we don't have enough energy to deal with because so much of our energy goes to those heavy questions. i thought of it, you know, all our energies, even as states, we sent to the borders of our beings. we're always in the danger of becoming like a suit of armor but without the night, the human being within. i wanted to write about the man or the woman within a suit of armor. and then after something like 10 or 50 years i felt that i found the idea of integrating the

situation with a very personal family story and it started with this idea that there would be a woman, one woman who, after she has grown her son to the point of arbitrage is a very strong intuition that something bad might happen to him. and then she starts first and she asks herself a, how is it possible that i have brought my own son to the army? how can it be i am more loyal to them, to the state, to the army, to more rather than to my mother? and then she understands why waiting for the notifier to come and -- she understands that it is -- if she is not there to

receive, maybe the whole machinery of the notification, of war, of all these would be reversed for what, a second, and our. such a huge time. she runs away from home and she starts to walk in the gallery with the love of her youth or maybe the love of her life. and she keeps telling him the small stories of her son who is now being in the war. and she does it because she has this feeling that, you know, when there is a danger hovering about, about one of our precious children, friend or family, there is a feeling that is all the effort we have infused while being their parent or a friend,

all the love and caring and attention, all of these start to evaporate certain. nothing can protect them in front of them. and she wants to re- infuse love and caring and meaning to her son. and she does this by telling the life story of his son from the very beginning. and she walked and she talked, it is a walkie-talkie book. beautiful landscape of the gallery in israel. and in a way she read -- reformulate the whole situation but i wonder to what extent when it read the book, i wonder to what extent the extraordinary figure of the woman in some way isn't, i don't meet again to turn the book in any way to political book, a parable of a certain emotional situation in israel. the book in hebrew is called, a

woman fleeing the news. and the irony about her story is that as she undertakes this huge exercise of our foibles and evasiveness, it becomes a journey of self-discovery in some way, even as she -- i wonder, you know, to what extent would you say that this characterizes, i'm generalizing here, a certain israeli attitude? in other words, she has the feeling that there might be doomed in the future, and she wishes to avoid the knowledge of this bill. and so she is really a fading something. and yet as she is evading it she is exploring herself in some way. do you feel that in some way your society also is -- and somewhat it is also fleeing some tidings are some report, et

cetera, et cetera? you know what i mean. >> gives. i didn't write speed is i know that. >> i've tried to describe human being or a woman flesh and blood, almost kind of, she is very israeli woman, policies, many other good things. but you are absolutely right, i think there is a great deal of denial, of turning the eyes into the other direction or back on reality because reality is unbearable. we live our life an and a realiy that i regard as no less than tragic. i must say that after the two

days i have spent years listening to the various interesting talks, i am deeply impressed and depressed at the same time. and part of it has to do with the gap between what we hear from people here who are looking at us, and seeing things that we should have seen but we cannot afford ourselves probably to see. i look at us, a societal us in israel, a society with intelligence, meticulous, ambitious people who manage to create life that will be in a way parallel to the life that we could have had and should have had. we live in, i mean, when you come to israel, come to tel aviv

or jerusalem, i mean, i'm quite sure if you come for first time, you came for dozens of times. those who, for the first time, they are struck by the vitality, and juno, of israeli life. the relationship, tel aviv, we like to think of it as a new york almost. and yet, all that very strong final reality is built on, on the edge. i will say something more than that. if there is strong self-triage of fear, that's, i mean, i cannot understand how we are able not to look straight into it and to do what it takes in order to change our situation.

how, how do we allow ourselves to be misled and tempted by this appearance, or illusion, of good life that we have? how come we have to come here and here from secretary panetta for hillary clinton, her brilliant speech today, to do the basic things that the change is needed for our interest. we are acting constantly against our interest. >> i think it's complicated in this sense. i mean, i have too much about what you described on the one hand i think that you're right, there is a certain, there is some evasiveness about the crisis that will sooner or later hit. we all know what it would be like. in fact, we have done what it will be likes his approximate

1970. this is not news. on the other hand, i don't know that it's of the appearance of good like the remarkable thing about israel when you visit it is, i mean, it's too easy to describe it in just denial. for many people when you go to tel aviv there is a good life. it's not just the appearance of a good life. and there's some wonderful way in which it's the flip side of the denial aspect in which the bike how the, israel, -- the vitality, israel, the ability to find a life in the present, a rich life, which you see actually in the literature of the year also. this is not a literature about the conflict. this is a literature about a life that is intrinsically lived. and the complexity of this relationship between ordinary people's lives and the conflict is very interesting. i am with you, i know we both are pretty much in a state of

despair about the situation in the sense that the peace process is dead. the relations between the leaders seemed almost irrevocably bad. everybody knows what is coming. nobody seems to want, et cetera, et cetera. and when one is in a state of despair, despair is a great spiritual jobs because it's not enough just to live in despair. you have to live with some sense of possibility. and i guess my next question to you is, in this situation that you described, how do you recover, how do you recover a sense of possibility when it seems that there is come on the one hand, you have this brilliant life, personal life, sensual life, economic life, i mean, israel blows in the dark in many ways. and on the other hand, there is this growing fear of dread that no progress is being made

against finding -- fighting inevitable disaster. how do you reconcile this? >> first, i think there is this barrier between the way we live, or actual situation. and maybe we live such intensity and vitality because we are aware of this abyss that we live on the edge it. what i do not find, are what i lack more and more, not only among israeli leadership but come on the israelis is the feeling that something can be changed, that still we can take our destiny ourselves. there is growing apathy of fatalism which is used and used by -- to fill this gap.

there is a feeling that no matter what we do, even if we do nothing, nothing can change the fact that we have no partner and that our future is an existential danger. we are totally passive and have no way to influence the situation or to change it in any way. this is something that is really hard for me to accept. i think, you know, israel was created so that we shall never be victims again. never victims of the bad will of the goodwill of others. we came to place that we shall be able to generate reality. and look at us today. having israel with all their achievements which are amazing, no less, there's something miraculous about what we have achieved in israel. starting with democracy.

all the people who poured into israel in the first years of israel. they never heard about democracy. they came from countries like poland or romania or morocco or egypt or russia. what did they know about democracy? why does this now start to crack down and to be very vulnerable, maybe we will talk about it. culture and agriculture. it is miraculous. and yet look at us. i mean, the original superpower having, as i've heard adam bombs, the best air force in the world, and we are paralyzed. we are victims. we are unable to refund the late ourselves, our enemies. we didn't have the ability, and i think especially our prime minister, benjamin netanyahu, does not have the ability to be

able to distinguish between the real danger that we face, and we do face, and the echoes of past tragedies of us. and he sticks everything together, and he, in a way come instead of suggesting a vision to us, instead of using our creative and innovative energies, as a people, as a society, our spirit, what he does is feed us with fear and threats. and by the way, most israeli leaders see the kind of narrative of the israeli leader, very rarely he will give us hope or vision, but usually he will start to glue us together and create the unity by feeding us with fears and resurrecting past fierce.

-- past fierce. and in these bizarre surprise that when they want to make a change, if you want to make a change, it is a great reluctance in their constituency. people are afraid. people were brought up to be effort. >> last night and reminded me, told me something, in english it would go, he said last year with it on the edge of the abyss. and this year we're taking a step forward. [laughter] and i shared your sins, not just a passive the. i think that there has been almost total collapse of the diplomatic imagination and issue. in other words, that problems, there is this passive the that once you find reach a place where a military solution can be considered and the analysis is militarized and that seems to be the approach. so that the security policy of

israel in recent years 10 he seems to have consisted in a wall and they were every two and a half years. i've in the north or the west. that's it, as far as i can do. and i think that, and i think that, what i imagine for example, i look at the arab spring and understand all the dangers that the arab spring poses. when you in mensa the people you emancipate the actually existing people, and when the dictator falls, that doesn't free them. that is when they have to free themselves so what they really want to do is become who they were. and who they were with regard israel is not necessarily very funny are positive, but still i imagine when someone like would you be doing with the every spring, the kind of activity, diplomatic activity, connection to secret connection, open connections, even and, you know, none of this at least publicly one doesn't see it taking place. and it is deeply troubling. it is deeply troubling. i want to ask you about, you

mentioned just how come you alluded to certain fractures or fissures in democracy, and it is certainly true that in recent years we have seen very disturbing developments regarding questions of tolerance in israel. i mean, there has been violence against the israelis, against the mosque, against houston is on the west bank. there been legislative attempts to outlaw foreign contributions to ngos, or to prevent certain kinds of civil rights cases from bring pot to the supreme court. there was the infamous attempt to enact loyalty oath, and sell. and maybe you could talk although the company, some of this has to do of course with the state of the israeli right. and i have to say as an american, i am not in any position to give lectures to you, good right-wingers because we have our own problems with the right in the united states

right now, which is also in many respects in a highly fevered and inflamed state. but is this just about developments on the israeli right, or is there something deeper that goes on? >> i think it's something deeper. of course, the right wing who suddenly find itself in a position that there's almost nothing to block it. no really serious public opinion, and no other party can really block it. and it's a temptation for the right wing, which is of course terrible mistake. an act that will undergird our democracy. but i think it reflects a deeper fear, you know? it reflects the way the new being of israel.

and we are, as a state, even though we looked quite old by now, what has happened to us. but this new innovative and daring state, you can see how gradually we, being absorbed into the jewish wars. and how the way we regard the wheel becomes more suspicious. unable to move in order to change our own situation or to initiate something. just think of the fact that right now, it almost happened, a source of concern, nobody knows, who knows, even the egyptians themselves, even though i met some time ago i met some egyptian writers.

they were almost euphoric and they said when asked about the danger of having the islamic brotherhood in power, and they said the people in egypt will never again allow dictatorship to take place. i hope they are right. we don't know. we don't know when they say democracy they mean what we mean here when we say democracy. democracy to be caring for the rights of the minorities. basics of the democracies. not only the rights of the majority to rule, i don't know if they are already able to grant total equal for women, or sexual, for non-muslims. i'm not sure they are there. i guess their way toward democracy will be different. and their democracy will be the variation of what we describe as

democracy. perhaps it would be affected by their culture the way they regard themselves in the family, in the state. it is very coveted. but there is something more appropriate i think, with people express their feelings rather than to deal with dictator. i think of the situation about israel benefits the deep support of america with all what israelis think about president obama, a deep commitment of the united states. u.k., france, germany, all these powers are so supportive of israel. they are supportive.

we know they're on our side. they offer of the arab league that was put on the table, nine years ago, and until now there was not one our the israeli government have dealt with these suggestions. there are new interests now, and new cooperations and new bonding within the middle east. not because countries and their love us. i cannot say that they like us or love us. but we are looking for love between human beings. but between nations, there are so many interests that we can use, that we can really change with them the situation. first and foremost, by entering a contract between us and the palestinians. i think we heard such strong and decisive come almost cry by the

american who spoke your, and secretary panetta said it. very anti-diplomatic and maybe very un-american way, yes, what is there to be afraid of in this someone is interested in to keep freezing of the situation, hoping that the status quo is moving. we know that wherever people are involved there is no status quo. it will burst, it will explode interface. >> we will get to the american israeli question in a minute but when i do talk about the arab spring in israel and the nature of the challenge, i remember years ago you gave a speech in which you proposed that such reconciliation between the leadership seemed impossible, it was time, as you put, to go over the heads of the leaders and speak directly to the palestinians. >> and webb look at the arab

spring and his relation to israel, i'm actually reminded, you know, students of the political history, of the jewish exile, scholars from have always made a distinction between vertical alliances and horizontal allies. jews in exile always preferred vertical alliance, meaning direct alliances with the king or the prints or the bishop, or the archbishop. as opposed to a alliances with the people. because they never felt that they would find the security they needed. in alliances with the people. as i say this is the general pattern. and, of course, israel, these are not jews in exile but to a certain extent the is ready relationship with the various arab autocrats like the borg, we produce about. it was still a vertical of life. they had to have an understanding with mubarak and others and that you're thinking and a few other people. and that would be the power. now unfortunately, or

fortunately but we will see, suddenly the opinions of millions of arabs are going to matter in the formulation of arab governmental policy in a way that it never did before so that israel may find itself in a position where it needs these millions of arabs, not only to fear it but also perhaps to understand it. and conversely, israel will then be in a position of having to understand arab populations in ways that israeli policy and stability of the security arrangements didn't require before. and this is a real challenge. i can come it reminds me of what you once said about, talking directly the population in by the way, you don't have to be jewish or israeli to acquire this approach. >> absolutely. >> the neck by the israeli relationship with america, because we are democracy, the thing about the vertical alliance is that it was always

premised on an authoritarian government. it only works when there's an authoritarian government. when there is a democracy or open society, it can't work. and so the strengths of the israeli relationship with the united states, even though it seems as though the strength lies within the leadership, the bedrock of it, has always been the extent to which israel can find popular support in the united states, among millions of americans. >> is it the case -- me i, in other words, after two days of being here and listening to mean the american spokesman, there's nothing passionate maybe you can light my eyes. but how can it be that there is such bitterness within american regime towards us in israel? how can it be that america finances us so heavily, among that finance all our -- in the

west bank allowing us to build a settlement? and yet, except that some criticism, no more, i do not see a real pressure taken by an american president regarding israel are coming, i know, it comes you are aware of the phrase, no taxation without representation, how can it be that we are taxing so heavily and have no representation in our policies? now, i'm not talking about imposing a solution on israel. no, we are not there yet. but i wonder, how can it be that the american president is unable to put enough pressure on the israeli prime minister, put them in one room and metaphorically not their heads together, make sense and talk, and do what i

regard as i think i'm not only one, is the solution of the two states. how is it possible? >> that's a very complicated question but i would say a few things. the first thing i would say is that sitting here, or in america, not just in washington, one has to bear in mind that we see not only israel's lost or wasted opportunities for peace, we also see the extraordinary threats that israel truly does face. i know you will agree with his but what i'm trying to say is that, that the relationship, it can't just, the analysis cannot just be why doesn't obama force netanyahu to stop settlements and go and make these? in the first place, he tried. and one of the things he discovered, and i had my own misgivings about the way he

tried, i think terrible blunders were made. i've in fact he discovered the limits of american power because, in fact, i mean, i'm of the belief, i think that they view that, that salvation will come from washington, which is a view that it's occasionally held by the left and occasionally held by the right in israel, at very us times, but basically the solution is here. i think that that's an expression of despair, about what's happening over there. and my own view is that, in fact, the only people who have the power, the capacity to make peace with the israelis are the palestinians themselves. i'm not happy with this. >> you know they cannot. >> this is why i'm not happy. [laughter] ok'd. >> no, no, no. i understand that, but the fact that they cannot doesn't mean that the united states can. and the united states can play all kinds of roles and again, i used to be myself much more

ardent in the few that the american president would finally, but i have to tell you, you know, if you think obama is the american frustration looks, with israel and looks extreme company, i guess you should see how the americans feel about pakistan. i think of pakistan makes israel look like it's as good an ally as england. americans, i think it's an illusion to believe, even though it's emotionally all-encompassing, that the united states get so much support, so much military support, and yet it's impossible to persuade the prime minister to freeze the damn settlements, which after all is a non-apocalyptic gesture and a year a prime minister who depends on the political base to which it is an apocalypse itself. but it is galling, it is frustrating. but i do think that the idea that the solution will come from washington is, it unfortunately

i don't believe it. i don't believe it anymore. >> by so saying actually say that the united states abandon israel to i don't know what. >> no, i think -- >> you know, in this phrase in hebrew,. [speaking in hebrew] the prisoner cannot set himself from priests and -- set himself from prison. we are trapped in this. we're trapping each other. we are unable to find within ourselves the energy and the parents it takes in order to change the situation. you saw what happened when ariel sharon, national trauma, partly in a very manipulative way to prevent further evacuation. but you can't understand after what we have been through that

israel -- doesn't have the power to defend tens of thousands of settlers. but more than that, the way we tell ourselves the story, the way i think prime minister netanyahu tells the story about our future, it does not include a fair settlement. ..

hamdan knous. i understand what you're saying and i certainly share your analysis of netanyahu's intentions and the possibility of any breakthrough on the site even though i'm not optimistic about the palestinian side. i think right now nobody is interested in progress. on the other hand as i say israel is a sovereign state and when you say we are abandoning you, you can mean one of two things either that the united states should actually withdraw some sort of military aid and use very blunt instruments. you could make that argument. i venture to say if the united states did that it still might not work. not because just because the idiosyncrasies or the failing of benjamin netanyahu whom i don't especially at my ear but we are abandoning the sovereign state to its own devices. and i have to say it sounds a little harsh, but if we are talking about blame, the blame

for the failure of the peace process must fall on the palestinians and the israelis. for example, if you would ask me why the united states cannot somehow get israel or both israel and the post means why it can't use its power. i would ask you given that why we agree about the inevitable consequences of london know who's believe -- netanyahu's believe. the strategy consists in one quiet week after another until the end of time is what he would like to have wise then across the sky to the to prospective political change in israel? when i look at the public opinion polls they seem to support a reasonable, sensible moderate compromise. their numbers are in the 50's

and 60's. the public opinion polls do not show overwhelming support for irrational an exhibitionist or miniaturist policies and did i look at the is really situation and i fink how is it therefore that the political alternative to what exists now seems weak? >> i guess the answer is again for your. it's a fear that as i said in the beginning if we are able to change something in this reality but oddly -- what i am concerned with is what happens to us in israel because the situation. we are cornered in the worst quarters of our society and for more than 40 years now i do it

because i think that peace is important for both parties. it's very much essential for the palestinians and i want to see the palestinians beating of the nation. i want to see how they are able to use their talents and capacities in creating something new in achieving the results without fear i don't want to be anybody's shadow pipe. without normal lives, just normalize with dignity and self-respect but as an israeli it is so much more essentials for me to witness life and see what it can bring us and i can speculate or reach for something. first of all we should have orders. can you imagine what it would

mean to a country that for the last 53 years and did not have stable borders. every decade our borders have changed and we were invading others it's like to live in the house with moles all the time they are not moving not to mention the air it is shedding under our feet. in certain situations where your identity enzus and the place of the other started always creates this one temptation of others to invade you and your need because you're not sure so peace will give a supporters that can be agreed upon the international community and arab countries which is the most important. it can give us peace and a sense of future. you know, if you are reading an

american paper that america place a national project for the year 2031, it sounds with all the problems in america it sounds natural and normal. no is really what make so much time in the advanced. when i think of israel in the year 2031 and i wish it to be of course yet i feel a kind of pain in my heart by allowing myself to much quantity of future this is impossible. it's impossible that israel of 53 years of existence doesn't have a deep-rooted legitimacy to exist. the only country its legitimacy is being tested even when people relate to the most atrocious regimes like north korea they do not suggest to dismantle the

country totally. they say maybe we should change the regime saddam hussein or libya. even regarding israel and that they might, exist or there might be some change as some people time and again suggest the interviews in the kind of talks tuesday why are you there, why don't you go back to your place is? and it's amazing that we have not been able to remind people. absolute legitimacy to be there the people in the arab countries and palestinians deeply to understand the affinity of us in this country and the importance of this country to our life, to the history of over culture, religion, everything. so, something that can be

achieved only when we have peace and this is as i said borders it may be the sense of having a future there. we shall be there and see the sequence of generation and something of solidity of existence we shall be routed there. we shall start to make our life from our material as a culture as a nation, and i call it solidity of existence. we don't know what it is brief life from the beginning of our being as a nation was a kind of life of the larger than life story. we were a story in a way there is always the story that is connected to us, always the

lesson should be drawn from. >> it's not the solidity of existence only when we have peace. this is why we have peace not because jujuy rule but allowing us to have this deep sense of belonging to a place of having the future there of will bring ourselves from this paradox that we are trapped in the throughout our history we are throughout our history a people who survived to live our life, and now we need to survive only. and it cannot be like that. it cannot be that all our aspirations will be to survive as the prime minister only wants to survive from one day to the next. it cannot be the capacities and military power we shall still hope only to survive lung

capacity to another because somewhere down the road we shall see. but if we shall live with all of the leaders that full life can give with the ability to explore or potential it is a totally different story and we do not bear somehow i don't know why did we do not dare to go there. >> i think before we go to questions there are many things to be said about those extraordinary remarks i would say two things. the first is there is a difference between legitimacy and solidity and i think that israel even before the attainment of peace its legitimacy is clear to me and others coming and you may discover that people who deny israel's legitimacy in the absence of peace may deny their legitimacy after peace because the legitimacy i think is based on something else. the second thing i should say is i've always thought that the

most important zionist concept of all, the greatest concept in the history of zionism has always been the idea of although emancipation. that to you talk about the need to emancipate the other but in fact maybe one can to a certain extent emancipate the other but i don't think that peace will come and then we will go to questions until both of the israelis and palestinians in some ways emancipate themselves. you have been in the forefront of the struggle of what i would call the israeli although emancipation. but i agree with you that it isn't clear what the duration of the struggle will be, how hard the will be and so on. but again, i will stop there because there is so much to say. we have time for questions. rac hands and i want you to know the life here is so bright i can see hands but not faces so this is completely neutral whatever i

do. >> the university of maryland. the question is about the situation how the israelis have bill to the illusion of how good the status quo is and what leon says mabey has elements of truth to it and maybe that is why the argument about why you need to change has to do with the future that it's going to get very bad if you don't reach an agreement. it will be the end of the democracy or jewishness sorts of about threats to the future not about how bad the status quo is and that has been of course the premise of all the arguments about the future of the future and the past the opinion polls that we have done show that in fact there was a fear so we ask people what would happen if the

two state solution ended no longer an option and the majority would say it would be violence for years to come so just terrible. people in the arab world as well. what we find this year is something really troubling far more than the illusion about how good the status quo is and that is in the package that you have in your folders that we just released from israel would we find is now the poor devotee of when you ask them what happens if the two state solution ends they say the status quo will continue and only the minority say there will be violence for years to come. my colleague commented that he found that to be the most troubling element that they possibly were constructing this rationalization of it wouldn't be too bad even if the whole to state solution collapsed. so i would like to hear david's comments on this observation on

what it means. >> i'm sorry to disappoint you. the fact that such and such people say this will happen in the future doesn't really say that it will happen. most of our reality is comprised of the possibilities of the past in every walk of life. but i deeply do not believe in the status quo and i cannot believe in it because i see that what we described now is the status quo in israel is the opposite. it's constant deterioration. we see what happens to israel. i will not speak now about what happened in palestine and gaza but there is the deterioration of everything that is precious to me to read our democracy, the liberty of the freedom of the court of the media, the thing

that happened with their attitude towards women is unbelievable the outrageous. so there's a constant process of deterioration and the more it grows the more it will take into it more and more supporters and agents. there is nothing that can generate hope. people become more despair oriented and despair creates their agents and more and more start to believe that this is the only life that awaits us as the prime minister once said the jews are the same shoes and the arabs are the same arabs and this is quite the predominant feeling among the israelis. it's not -- there is a process

here and for our state it must be stopped and this is what i kept saying peace is for us. it is our major interest as a society, as a nation. this is the only thing that might -- i'm not sure if this can be very fragile don't forget that every piece with a compromise for both sides means that they will be frustrated in a violent fanatic fundamentalists on both sides and they will do everything they can to assassinate. it's hard even to imagine the two prime ministers on both sides who will be able to maintain and adhere to the peace process while there will be suicide bombs in the streets of jerusalem or other acts in the north bank in palestine. and yet if we do not start now i

believe that we are doomed not in the sense that israel will not exist, but we are doomed in the sense that we should live life without, we should live by this old and die by the salt and it will be the only landscape and horizon we shall be able to see. we shall not even remember to formulate an alternative. we should not be able to remember that there is another option. we should not be able to trace signs of hope within our enemies of today or partners. we should not be able to read them. we should be alerted to such and by so doing we should do our part of the repetition of blood. this is a reality i do not wish for ourselves. i wish so much more for that for israel and for perlstein to respect i would and you raise an important point even more

important than the resumption of the peace process in my mind is the loss against the two-stage solution from a loss of faith in the two-stage solution is the most dangerous development i can imagine. >> the only real alternative is greater palestine tariffs am i i want, i think that in this international choir with so many voices there is a place for a jewish state, a state for the jewish people, and any other option is distrusted and fatal and they should continue with the occupation which again i do not really believe that the palestinians will comply obediently with the ongoing of what we call the status quo. there will be a moment when we

explode and i'm afraid will be much more destructive and dangerous for us and for them as well. >> questions on this side as well. i can't see you but i can see your hand. >> thank you. as a brief follow-up to what you said what are the alternatives to the two state solution? for example having such concepts as parallel state code and i'm not going into it now. all forms of the arrangements are being discussed very much in the palestinian discourse with this is not what i was going to say. and maybe i will offer a quote buy an illustrative diplomat who says after the prime minister

has made his proposal and i didn't come here for a lesson in the statement, and from there i'm going to the following. what is the built-in assumption in your argument in the case of all of us to support the two state solution if it was, if it were the assumption that the board of the palestinians are offered is a little state within the '67 borders and no more? what if you were to discover, as i think we will, this is not what they are after? and i would finish by quoting a very famous palestinian intellectual who was advising yasser arafat for many years and advising how he says don't read

us from. we are fighting for independence that's not a synonym for sovereignty. this came to you because the question i'm asking myself what do we do if it turns out that the other party is sticking to the slogan of the solution but it has become only a slogan and it's not -- it is no longer the platform no longer the real political agenda what do we do in that period? >> there have been enough negotiations and dialogue between the two people and the leadership of two people that they should never quote like that in which it became clear that on the ground of reality again not talking about dreams and wishful thinking most reasonable palestinians understand that this is what

they can get for now. i emphasize for now. they will continue to dream and as i said. but it's for now also for our extremists to dream about. this is what we can achieve. after living so many years in this place i settle for what is achievable. i do not even ask for perfect justice or absolute justice. the solution will be made a very partial and even disabled justice the border that we should be able to draw would be to double from a very clumsy the hard to defend, but this is our reality. we should have to live with that

>> martin has given me a severe look about time. i'm supposed to say we are going to break for a while and come back otherwise i want to nameofchanges.org my extraordinary friend and say it's been a very fine conversation. >> thank you. [applause]

>> and the u.s. conference of mayors is meeting in washington

is becoming about 2 p.m. eastern we will hear from the mayors of los angeles, boston, san francisco, philadelphia and new orleans and a number of other cities. but until then when the herd from arianna huffington and house minority leader nancy pelosi. [applause] >> first let me share with all of you that mayor nutter and smith were with us a press conference earlier that some of you attended. they will be here in just a moment. we were just at abc with diane sawyer and i can tell you that the message is the message that everyone of you have brought to washington, d.c.. they need to invest in job creation and move this economy along.

with that i get the honor of introducing a friend of mine. i introduce arianna huffington and elie native by the way that's lived there at least a couple of decades. they don't elect a mayor of the blogosphere but if they did i could tell you that arana huffington would win going away. [applause] she's hard charging and visionary, the editor-in-chief of the huffington post media group her columns can be ridden publications across the nation and indeed the world she's offered at no less than 13 bucks. in recognition of her status as one of the countries in the world's most innovative leaders

to the list of the world's 100 most influential people. not just once but twice. today is a great opportunity for us to hear from someone who led the media charge to focus on national conversation on issues related to the middle class and jobs. she's here with us to discuss what role the mayors would drive our metro economy should be playing in the current national policy debates. please, join me in welcoming arianna huffington. [applause] >> said thank you so much for inviting me to be with you today. let me just say i have been obsessively checking on

foursquare and i amount of mayor of the conference. [laughter] it's not been too long so the power hasn't gone to my head yet. but i'm glad to say that i'm not the only one here with an accent. already i met a few other mayors, real mayors and accent that made me feel powerful ever since we moved from greece to the state and even before that to england i had this issue with my accent and that henry kissinger. and said you can never underestimate the incredible advantages. in american public life of complete and incomprehensible that the. [laughter] i want to start by saying something about the mayor of the liberal side. i met him before he was mayor and when he was a speaker in the

california wine from 1999 and interestingly enough when they are organized by united way that had just built the freeport called a tale of two cities about what was becoming an los angeles, the major problem of child poverty, homelessness etc. in the middle of a building prosperity and at the time i remember antonio that said if you want a future and i am quoting him, where you have to walk around with a bodyguard, then continuing to acknowledge is the way to get there. now the irony is the was 1999. and 2012 things are infinitely worse and things are much better. [laughter] in fact it is experiencing an amazing have poured mobility. while we are experiencing

amazing downward mobility. indeed a report just came out that shows that america is intense and upward mobility behind spain and the scandinavian countries and france. behind france and upward mobility is a little bit like france being behind us in afternoon sex. [laughter] not a very good idea. indeed write your very close by to where we are we are experiencing the nation's highest unemployment rate for the urban area at 25%. right here it is away from the white house as ensure many of you here know the population has gone in the last ten years.

at the last few acres in connecticut the education but allows us to live the american dream we are having college kids burdened with over a trillion dollars in debt by the time they graduate so as we are looking at our media obsession with a presidential race i fast reporters and we are now together to start the local initiative has over 1500 reporters under america and i've asked them to focus on what's happening to our poorest communities and what is happening to the suburban poverty and that today we have a great story about what is happening in south carolina in the county that's experiencing double the national employment will the candidates in south

carolina talk about also all sorts of things that accept poverty we want to put a stop light of the least among us which is after all with the bible was asking us to do. [applause] and we know the come now have the ability to bear witness to the online media combined we have over 135 million visitors a month. we would love to amplify your amazing voice is because you know right now what is happening better than anyone else in your own community. i would like to invite you we created a special e-mail address just for you, stifel fourth for

the huffingtonpost.com at me give you my personal e-mail address, arianna@huffingtonpost.com and we would love to hear your voice is featured prominently has been a frequent blogger and we would love to give the opportunity to find out what you know first hand because there is no substance for that and to have a national conversation that can touch our hearts and weaken our empathy and expand our circles of concern because there is a race against time at the moment about what country we are going to become. but spiritually are we going to become a country where we are turning out one another and afraid of each other a country where we are paralyzed as our leaders are here in washington, d.c. are we going to tap into what is best to call the better

angels of aware nature and when we tapped into that there is absolutely no problem and no price we can overcome and i know we are going to do it. [applause] if everybody is talking about our deficits i would like to spend a couple of minutes to talk about that because i was born and lived in a one home apartment, but my mother who i met over a great dinner at my home she has coped with a great bottle of red wine remember antonio. my mother was always focusing even when we had nothing. she would say you have an abundance of skill and talent and we could tap into that and everything we could do right and

we need to change the conversation and put a spotlight on our talent and resources that are going underutilized. even among the people who are out of work we have a lot of skilled people out of work and even the people who are not skilled have time on their hand. how badly at the local level we can tap into the time and resources to have each other. after all, we did it during the hurricanes. remember during hurricane i mean how everybody came together. everybody pitched in and came through by mitigating economic and destructive impact. why do we have to wait until there are natural disasters or external threats before we cut into that very american spirit? and also eroding in the national institutions, there are growing

in the local institutions. so your role is more important now than ever and that is why i was so grateful that you invited me to be here because i have been writing and thinking a lot about what we in the media can do to keep the spotlight on the creative innovative solutions that you are working to materialize in your own community. i'm reading about them and the reporters are collecting them but with your help, we can actually create a much larger conversation that can begin to change the country fundamentally. on one of our sites, john wrote over the weekend that the mayors should look at their cities like a startup. he said the ingredient for a successful startup are remarkably similar. you need to build stuff that people want. you need to attract quality talent and have enough capital to get your ideas to

sustainability and you need to create a world class culture that not only attracts the best possible people but encourages them to stick around even when things are not going so great. so, we now have three sections to cover all the good stuff happening. one of them we launched last week and we are calling it to the good news section. so if you have any good news, however small, please share it with us because people go to the front pages of newspapers and their television and it's all full of bad news. who killed who and which countries the credit rating was downgraded and how about going to the good section and you only read examples of the human spirit at work? [applause] and then we also have a section that gives people a lot of ideas

on how they can help and what they can do and the final thing that we have is the greatest person of the day. so if anybody in your community who you want to profile that you want to give more attention to, please have somebody on your staff send us their story and we would love to profile them. we would love to put more spotlight on them because that's the way to encourage others to get involved. 2012 is really the time you hear of the protester the bottom line is it is the year we recognize it is that the local level but solutions are going to come from its the end of the illusion that the country will be transformed from the white house. whether you are a liberal or conservative, democrat or republican, is it time that we

realize the country is going to be transformed from our community? [applause] the people know that which is why according to the latest gallup only 17% of americans were satisfied with the way that things are going. and i look forward to hearing the majority leader, but you know, 2011 ended with congress having an 11% approval rating. so this is your moment. more than ever this is your moment. and i really believe that as we are looking at what you can do it and looking at what happens with her during hurricanes are the second world war (no equivalent) deutsch will gardens are planted wouldn't that be good so whether we are freezing

or maintaining are planting vegetable gardens were helping each other in innovative ways using social media, using as you know is now bringing technical professionals to help where they help people actually report any triet that isn't working and now others are coming to help. there is so much innovation come so much creativity, so much ingenuity, and this is the moment to come together and create that critical mass of the seeded municipality, towns, a community is coming together and transforming the country and we are looking to you to lead us and i'm really excited to be here to offer a partnership with us to amplify the great work

that we are doing. thank you so much. [applause] i thought we might take the opportunity to take some questions from arianna. so, any questions? >> i have one. >> you mentioned the innovative things that the mayors are dillinger of the country. share with us some of the things that you think the congress ought to be doing right now to put people back to work. our number-one goal is focusing on the economy and as you said

they haven't done a whole lot in that regard. >> absolutely, and another thing dear to your heart, i believe that there is actually no excuse for not having a great public private infrastructure program. i mean, our bridges, our interests are crumbling believe even though if we were full employment we would need an infrastructure program so there is no justification for not having when one the country is experiencing both high levels of unemployment including among the manufacturing sector. i was recently flying to sell paulo in brazil because we are launching the huffingtonpost.com there and we worked with to help fund managers. order you doing? we are going to saw apollo because we are partnering to build our infrastructure. i said what is wrong with partner in with the government here to build our

infrastructure? and you know what is interesting in brazil is that what you talk to eric but he's the orie labor leader that has an identical objective which is to move people out of poverty into the middle class because they believe this is the way to build a stable prosperity and an economy that's working for everybody i don't understand why these issues in the country seem as left as right. that's another thing that haven't been the way of describing what's happening left versus right because it is another way to polarize it. instead of recognizing that so much of what we all want, strengthening the middle class, good schools for our kids, being able to ensure that our children have better than we do are things we all want wherever we

are in the political spectrum and i think that is what the congress needs to understand. but at some point i think we need to realize that many to look in and discover in the mirror as you all did in order to answer and just do what we can ourselves because there is only so much time you can spend abegging ahead. he used to go around a big game from statues and at one point somebody stopped him and said what are you doing begging and he said i'm practicing disappointment. [laughter] so i think we've all practiced disappointment and i think that if we focus on what we can do ourselves we can actually change the climate in this country and then others will follow. others here in washington, d.c..

[applause] >> mike is on his way. >> mayor from california. >> thank you, mayor villaraigosa. you are offering us something else extraordinary today in terms of how we can use this to turn back public opinion and share good news, etc., etc.. what are the areas that many of us deal with is energy, and the fact that unfortunately it has gotten coupled with global warming and everybody immediately starts saying do you believe or do you not believe, those of us that are just trying to make a difference and sell in our communities, we're trying to get community gardens, trying to have mass transit read we are trying to do all sorts of good things and very often we are just told no because here in

washington this whole global warming has killed everything. there is no energy bill, there is no climate bill, there is no green block grant. there are just things that are not there. i'm wondering how can we work with you because you meet so many people but we could decouple some of these things and focus on projects that we know work and create jobs, that we know make a difference and get that vote so that we start turning the public opinion of mount. there is obviously a disconnect here and you are the connector. >> we would love to do that and we can do it at multiple levels. we can do it at the very local level as there are many patches the hyper local journalist initiatives that are really about 40 to 50,000 people. it's really local with a professional journalist, and then we can move to the local city in los angeles and in san

francisco and go nationally. and even internationally because the other positions affect everybody. and then putting the spotlight on the projects we are describing. the community gardens for the solar system or the results and then people can see that whatever they may think here is something that is working. when people see results they can really change public. i believe fundamentally we can change hearts and minds. we've done that. how did we move? >> i believe that as well. just one specific example for you in our committee today we are talking about how you can go to the supermarket and there can be apples from all over the world. none of them from california. if we could coordinate such that local farmers can bring products to market in mid these patches that you are talking about it

creates energy and jobs and helps the environment, etc., etc.. any thoughts on that as an example? >> we can demonstrate the power of what is supporting the local community can do and that is we can play hardball because there are also seven laws many other states in the books that deal with the shelter crisis and why not actually use this to declare in an emergency when you have shelters overflowing i just actually did some research because we are going to be covering this in the huffingtonpost.com command according to the law in the books in california i'm reading from the status quo it was a significant number of persons within the jurisdiction of the party as we lost the the the job to shelter you can declare the state of emergency.

how about that? over a million in california to get is in that state of emergency? a quarter of the homeless people in the united states in fact still live in california. including almost half a million homeless children. i frankly do not believe that the american people really knew this fact. were really telling the stories of what it means to be a homeless child. they would care. i profoundly believe that. look at what happens when one child is supposed to be in a balloon. remember how we all obsessed for days even after we knew he wasn't really the balloon point, still breaking new news. what if we construct a big balloon and pretend that we are putting the harmless children are not the country to get some

media attention the point is we need to use all of the means at our disposal. the existing wall spotlighting the good things, anything we can do to change the conversation from the campaign which is becoming like a reality show now they are dropping out every week to actually what is the real crisis that people are experiencing and that you know about first hand because you are seeing it firsthand every day. >> i want to thank you very much, arianna huffington. [applause]

ms. huffington has made a call. all of us can link up with our neighborhood patch and blog and tell our stories and the story of american cities in the huffingtonpost.com thank you very much. i understand she's on the house. my good friend. nancy pelosi, democratic leader of the house. [applause] every single time we come to washington, d.c. we ask for a

meeting every single time that we've come to washington, d.c. with a problem nancy is working to find a solution. every single time we have said it's time for the congress to act on the issue of jobs and economic development she has been their right along our side. please help me in welcoming my friend, our friend, a woman who was with us in baltimore, whose death was the mayor of baltimore, tommy alessandro a good leader for america and nancy pelosi the democratic leader of the house. [applause]

amol goebel conversations >> good afternoon. thank you very much, mayor villaraigosa for your generous introduction and service to the city of los angeles to your great leadership with the president of the u.s. conference of mayors. you know when i come here and we were in baltimore last year i said it was like coming home. i hope that the great mayor of baltimore is here. stephanie. good to see you again. we are very proud of our mayors. the city that i am from. all of my brothers were serving

of the town for many years. isn't tom wonderful, aren't we blessed to have his service? [applause] really it is great to be here with all of you. this is really an important time. i want to thank neyer villaraigosa for his leadership and putting the economy's report which all of you work with to a ford. it outlines the challenges facing not only the local government, but our entire nation. the urgent need to create jobs, to strengthen the middle class and restore fairness and growth to the economy. you have brought to the u.s. conference of mayors your advocacy on behalf of the transportation initiatives that are a part of this economy and the transit system through the roads, highways, infrastructure, broadband to put americans to work. thank you for honoring us in san francisco by being present as a

friend and as a u.s. conference of mayors at the inauguration of the new mayor, newly elected mayor. ed lee, the first chinese-american mayor of san francisco. this is quite a remarkable thing. we are proud of him and probably taking a longer route into this room. at that time and you will tell him i said this, in these words that a day inspired all in some francisco and the approach of the mayor's nationwide when he said he spoke of confronting challenges, taking risks and increasing innovation. pure vice president, major nutter companies arizona got all of you gathered here today at the head table in this room, thank you for bringing of the voices of your constituents to the nation's capital.

every year when the mayors gather in washington or what ever you across the country when you come to washington you bring with you hope, the aspirations and the priorities of the american people. when you speak, congress and the president listened because mayors come from our challenges of the ground level. as was mentioned my father and my brother were mayors. i know firsthand there is no buffer between a mayor and his or her constituents. every day, we talked about this, every day you hear the story of unemployed workers. you have parents struggling to make ends meet and what they need to care for their children to pay the bills and put food on the table. every day you see the impact of the policies made in the capitol in state government and in your own city hall with the lives of working families. they recognize investments in the city and education and job-training and clean energy, transportation, affordable

housing, community health centers or investments in the common future. and we know better than anyone in our country what is best for american cities pa large and small is best for america. that's why when i talk to people on the private sector and the nonprofit sector the leaders say to me what is the best way we can put our resources philanthropic we to make a difference in the nation's future always say the same thing. talk to america's mayors. they have a vision, they have a plan, they get things done. the agenda of the nation's mayors have served a long time the blueprint for the democrats in congress. that remains true today. democrats have made a promise and are committed to reigniting the american dream. the most enduring theme in america reignited the flock to

cities to realize the letters of the opportunity and remaining obstacles to the success for all who are willing to work hard, play by the rules and take responsibility. we must rebuild our nation's trading middle class and we can do that by rebuilding america's infrastructure right whacks weekend work and we have work to do. i know from last year many of you wrote to me after i saw you after the infrastructure issue and i will talk more about that in a moment. we in congress and democrats are focused on you come on the court priorities that creating jobs as you are focused, strengthening and expanding small businesses and growing our economy. right now, that means right now fighting to extend the payroll tax cut for the rest of the year

to 160 million americans. [applause] for unemployment benefits to millions of americans who've lost their jobs through no fault of their own and to ensure that tens of millions of seniors can see their doctors under medicare. but let me just say this i want you to know this is all happening now. the democrats are saying we've never had -- republicans have resisted. the of a double standard. they've resisted paying for tax cuts to the wealthiest people in our country. but they insist that tax cuts for the middle class be paid for. we are saying let's pay for that by if you want to pay for its let's pay for it with a surcharge on the wealthiest people in the country. so 160 million americans can have the tax cuts and just demand into the economy by spending that money and creating jobs. ..

>> that's where we are. a surge charge on the wealth can cover the cost using the war savings and remove all doubt that seniors can see the doctors. that's the fight we're in. if the republicans don't like the surcharge on the wealthiest people in the country, which, by the way, yield $200 billion,

they can come up with some other things. we're happy to talk about ending subsidies to big oil, having the secretary of hhs negotiate for lower prescription drug prices. you know, there's things to talk about, but the surcharge is the easiest, the cleanest. you come at a time when that's the fight that we are in. the u.s. conference of mayors has laid out a vision and its priorities. as always, it starts with jobs. we recognize that our national recovery depends on the success of our cities, and working with you, we must pass jobs bills that put people back to work in our communities. now, some of the people have never been to work, so we need more jobs, additional jobs so we're not only putting people back to work, but we have job opportunities for many more people. democrats' agenda starts with the abc's in our view of job creation. american made. make it in america.

it's not to be -- it's not to be -- [applause] protectionist. it's to be self-reliant. a, american made. b, build america. build infrastructure of america, and, c, community recovery. let the recovery come from the communities and have the people in the communities create it. we must make it america. get back to the abc's so the workers and our families can make it america. stop the erosion much -- of our manufacturing base to be self-reliant. support small business and entrepreneurs, engine of the economic growth providing incentives for them to hire new workers and ensuring those businesses can thrive and grow, and in recent months, democrats in light of the american's president's jobs act, we reached out to thousands of business

owners in our district and the key challenges they say is in how the american jobs act addresses them. they want access to capital, access to skilled work force, access to a more customers. our bill addresses these concerns head on, and i commend president obama for his proposal to reorganize government focusing on new opportunities and markets to our small businesses, the creator of jobs, the creator of capital. to build the middle class, again, we must build the infrastructure of america. with key investments in public transit, high speed rail, high speed broadband, roads, bridge, water systems. some of the water systems are made of wood and brick. that's a health issue. of course, our highways. mayor has led the way in los angeles with the 30-10 initiative. america's mayors made a plan called "america fast forward."

we follow what you do. america fast forward. we know supporting the initiatives will create construction jobs now, spurring the economy today, and laying the ground work for prosperity into the future. community recovery with city, states, and trust budgets, we must invest in the recovery of our local communities. we must fight to fully restore community development block grants. [applause] we have to fight for critical support for housing, for economic development, and job training in our neighborhoods to the level of investment that we made when the house had the democratic majority. we need your help to work together for the cdbg funding to take it to the level. now, we have fought and won some of the battle of pushing it up, but not to where we want to be. i thank you president obama for

the strong initiative to extend summer jobs for 180,000 young people in cities and communities around our country, but we must do more. for the sake of the economic growth and next generation of the work force. i congratulate you all, by the way, because i was not here on floor action with awards of obesity and health and well being of our children. thank you for your leadership in that regard. it's very, very important. they are our future. we have -- we have passed that legislation in congress, worked with the first lady on the initiatives, but thank you for your regular in addition. again, we pushed proposals of make it in america, build the infrastructure, community recovery, and some of these proposals are in president obama's american's job act. we put these ideas on the table time and time again. americans, as the president said, can't wait any longer. we must act, and we must fight.

one way that i need to enlist your support again for us to fight is about how our politics is done in our country. today, we must fight for fairness, equality, opportunity, not just for some, but for all americans to protect the voices of the americans you represent against the power of special interests in washington, d.c. and nationwide. that's why we must continue our drive for clean campaigns. we must fight for a new politics free of special interests influence. we must fight for disclosure to get unlimited secret donationings out of politics. once the bright light of disclosure is placed there, it has a healthy, wholesome impact. that's what we can do now, but

when we win the election, not to get political, we must fight for reform. disclosure, reform to empower small donors and the grass roots to have a greater role in elections to offset the big secret money. we must fight to amend our constitution, to overturn the crushing supreme court decision that strengthen the hand of special interest at the expense of people's interest. disclose now, reform with the majority, and amend the constitution. we must fight to remove obstacles to voter participation right now. we must protect the rights of every citizen to vote and every vote to be counted. we must uphold the corner stone and core values of our democracy that the votes of the american people determine the outcome of our elections, not the bankroll of the privileged few. this is not about the 99% or the

1%. thank you for your work on the poverty caucus of the mayors. it's very, very important. in everything that we do, whether it was health care, and we talked about that last year, and secretary sebelius made her presentation, and the poorest person in america benefits from having quality access here in america. it's important to address the needs of all the american people. mayor lee said he would lead a city not for the 99% or the 1%, but for the 100%. together, we'll lead a nation for 100% of the american people. didn't his speech remind us of your speech when you were sworn in as mayor, mr. mayor? dream with me, los angeles. i could see it in your eyes while you watched the speech that it sounded like a new

mayor. for us working together to reignite the american dream and preserve the rights of all americans, we need your help, we need your leadership, partnership, advocacy, and the energy of the mayors to, a, make it america, build our infrastructure, have community leadership, and rebuild america and having a new politics, as i say, free of the special interests. only then can we have the fairness in our society that our founders foresaw, and that was part of their vision. as we rebuild america, revitalize our business, reinvigorate the work force, restore prosperity, we must do that right now and for a long time. you know, this weekend, you mayors, i know, understand the urgency of this moment. it's a really important critical time. we could tip one way or another.

this weekend as we marked martin luther king, jr. day, imagine this beautiful monument, beautiful monument in the national mall with lincoln and jefferson and roosevelt and washington, martin luther king, jr., pretty thrilling he's there as a giant of america. remember the speech he made, the i had a dream speech, but many of us loved the part when he talked about the fierce urgency of now. it's very popular to talk about that, but it's very urgent right now to be sensitive to it. with all of those words about the fierce urgency of now is what i love. he said this is no time to engage in the luxury of pulling off or to take the transquillizing drug of gradualism. the same could be true of the same challenges we face today.

talked to you about the possibilities of the internet and how you can increase communication and the rest of that. we have an expanded opportunity through science and technology and through awareness. the technology provides for us to make a very big difference for our children, for their future, for our country. we owe our men and women in uniform who are coming home now from iraq and hopefully soon from afghanistan. we owe them a future worthy of their sacrifice. we have the means at our disposal. we have the idealism. we have the conference of mayors that has its -- it has its vision. it has its knowledge and judgment about these subject. it has a strategic plan, and you have a connection to the american people that is unequaled in politics. as you wrote when we gathered

here five years ago, we need strong cities, strong families, for a strong america. that's still ringing true today, and there is no time to waste. right, mr. mayor? no time to waste. we must act now to improve the state of our cities, and in doing so to strengthen the nation, health and well willing of our children, and reignite the american dream. thank you, mayors, for your leadership, for our cities, for our family, and for our nation's future. it's an honor to bring greetings to you from the congress of the united states to this very important meeting. thank you. [applause] >> we're going to take a picture over here. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> i was saying to the democratic leader that when i said this conference loves her, that standing ovation has a lot to do with the fact that year in and year out, nancy pelosi is there for our cities.

let's give her a big hand again. [applause] >> live picturing this afternoon from the african-american session of the u.s. -- afternoon session of the u.s. conference of mayors. we'll join this when it gets started here on c-span2. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> okay. good afternoon. i'd like to welcome everyone to this afternoon's winter session. i'm standing in. as you can tell, i'm not the

mayor, and i'm not michael nutter. but i am scott smith, and i would like to welcome you all. we announced the multiyear partnership with one of the great names in corporate america, scotts miracle grow. we leek them, to beautify our nation's cities. >> i'm going to skip this part about los angeles, but i'll assure you -- [laughter] that scotts is a great resource for mayors looking to enhance municipal gardens and green scapes. over the past several years, los angeles' arts and parks committee adopted a number of resolutions calling for cities to develop -- that's the uscm arts thing, and also grow and maintain edible gardens in city parks. the gor1,000 gardens and green

spaces grants program was created to promote and recognize mayor leadership in the area. i'll call on the chief environmental officer with scots miracle grow to announce the awards recipients. rick? [applause] >> thank you. thank you, mayor. sorry that he couldn't be here, but excellent stand in. >> thank you. >> you got to put in stuff for your city that way. >> we'll do that. >> that's great. i'd like to thank everyone here, the entire conference of the mayors, members for having us here this week in dcment on behalf of the colleagues from scotts miracle grow, it's an honor to be part of the meeting of the nation's mayors. i'd like to thank the team for the tremendous support these past few months embarking on creating our partnership. for those of you not familiar with scotts miracle-gro, we've

been in the parks and green space business for 44 years, found as a grass seed business in marysville, ohio, and that's where our headquarters are still at. in providing lawn and garden and outdoor living products and services, our roots are firmly grounded in the cities where we operate and the communities we call home. as an organization, we believe it's important to help nurture and give back to the cities and neighborhoods, and the people in those communities. we also firmly believe in the benefits that gardens and green spaces uniquely bring to our cities. it's residents and the environment. as mayors of our urban centers, you know what gardens and greenspaces can do from jump starting economic development and urban revitalization to providing a place for children to play, gardens and greenspaces have the power to transform communities. scotts has already had the

pleasure of working with many of the mayors here today on a variety of transformative green space initiatives. we've seen just how a teaching garden in los angeles can help children with autism to learn, grow, and explore. in the city of houston, we saw firsthand how a community comes together and supports the edible garden movement all in partnership with mayor parker. to help more communities experience the tangible benefits of gardens, we launch the grow 1,000, a national outreach initiative to reach 1,000 gardens and greenspaces in the u.s. and canada and europe by 2018. after learning about the uscm's commitment and strategic focus on expanding the nation's greenspaces, it was clear that our organizations had to come together, this partnership was a natural fit. this truly dynamic partnership that will recognize my your

leadership and stewardship in greenspace development in our cities and municipalities and while today's focus is on grow 1,000 in the community garden initiative, we'll also excited to explore the way scotts and conferences work together in the future to discuss water quality and conservation issues facing the cities, and now on to the grant. there was an incredible response to the call for grant submissions. we want to thank all the mayors that applied. the projects demonstrate how gardens in green spaces are leveraged for the future of our cities. now the 2012 grow 1,000 garden and green space grant recipient cities for the year are baltimore, maryland and the upton edible garden, mayor stephanie rawlings. would you please step up?

cleveland, ohio and the urban agricultural cultivation zone, mayor frank jackson. [applause] columbia, south carolina and the i-126 graystone boulevard interchange greenspace, mayor steve benjamin. [applause] corpus christi, texas and the ly nndale park initiative, and san fransisco, california and the casada greenspace initiative, mayor edwin lee. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> congratulations to all the award winners, and there was one part of the rules that maybe we should have been more clear on that is you must be present to win. [laughter] there was another part of the rule that's left to the chair's discretion, and that is those who are not present, the money will roll over to the chair's hometown.

[laughter] on behalf of mesa, arizona, i'd like to thank -- [laughter] oh, she ruins it. [laughter] mayor stephanie rawlings blake just in time to save our fine community to receive the award it justly deserves. congratulations, mayor. thank you, rick and scott. scotts miracle-gro. i can't stop saying that name. it's a great name. i want to call on san fransisco mayor edwin lee to talk about a task force he's chairing. i'd like to congratulate mayor lee on his recent election, congratulations, mayor lee, now serving a full term as mayor of san fransisco. mayor lee? [applause] >> nawng, good afternoon, everyone. i -- last year, i was interim mayor, and i got a chance to

join you and made a presentation on a technology solution that we thought would help us with our vehicle congestion called sf park, and immediately, i got quite a few of you to tap in and say, hey, i want to take a look at that technology. well, for the last year, in addition to running for mayor and being successful and elected for a full term, i was fortunate to create a relationship with our technology company. we're home to twitter, zynga, sales force, and there's google, apple, and some of the largest technology companies located san fransisco. we forged a partnership and created technology to help me, the mayor, one of our great cities in the country to solve solutions because we're not going to be dependent on federal and state moneys. we have to solve problems, and we can use technology to do

that, so as your rookie mayor to join you, what i wanted to do is contribute what i can using some of the strengths, and by the way, our unemployment rate in january of last year was 9.5%. by december, 7.8% unemployment rate. most of that was due to the growth of technology companies in our area, so you can see there's a huge, serious economic drive to this relationship with technology companies. so my effort to make my initial year a contributing year to the conference of mayors, i wanted to introduce this idea of creating a task force for technology innovation and work with those of you -- and i already got a shoutout from the mayor of gainsville, florida to join me on the task force and anybody else. i think a shoutout from austin

as well, who wants to join to see what kinds of technology can help us solve our urban problems, increase, and maybe improve service delivery for the residents and constituents. i'll begin with the park, but there's many, many other areas where technology will help us, and we're using innovation of their firms in the innovative minds to help us come out with solutions, so we'd like to start this, and we think we have a good idea, and i'd invite you to all join this task force on technology innovation, the newest task force for the conference of mayors. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you, mayor lee. mayor lee is the chair of the task force that our president has established. before we introduce this, i know the mayor is literally just pulling up, and we wanted 20 make sure because this is his initiative that he had the opportunity to appropriately

introduce this panel, so -- oh, here he comes. now intrt to the stage, -- entering to the stage, give a hand up for the mayor. [applause] >> thank you, mayor smith, three meetings at one time. just got back from the white house. as president of the conference of mayors made promoting a major export policy a top priority, and as you know, so has this conference. this preliminary panel on exports and ports is really a call to action for all of us to join in the u.s. conference of mayors, export ready metro challenge.

now, as shown in the metro economy's report yesterday, increasing exports is critical to job creation in our cities, and that's not gist true for a city like mine. it's not just true for, you know, the houstons, the miamis, the jacksonvilles. it's true for cities large and small from l.a. to burlington and metro reasons is where the business supports and financing and infrastructure all comes together to make that possible. now many ports, universities, and federal agencies are doing great work to help businesses export, but generally, our export systems are fragmented and unfocused, they are not integrated to get the greatest return on investment.

the export ready challenge calls on mayors to commit to the development of comprehensive metropolitan export plans for the regions bringing to the the diverse stake holders working on exports and then to be executing those plans in 2013 or sooner. now, these plans will help us focus on efforts to address industry clusters with the greatest return to fill gaps, eliminate redundancies among export providers, to use our existing resources better. now, the inspiration for this is, frankly, a lot of people, but one of them is mayor adams in portland. coleman in minneapolis-st. paul, and mayor miner in syracuse. they, and i, are all finalizing

export plans, piloting with the brooklyn institution and the rockefeller foundation. now brookings agreed to provide a very detailed how-to guide for creating the plan, and also planning to make available some group training sessions. we'll have federal support. last summer, the u.s. conference of mayor, as you know, adopted a policy resolution calling on federal agencies to assist in implementing customized metro pal tan export plans. the national government responded and the strategy explicitly includes a commitment to health, and i urge you all to join in this challenge. now i'm very pleased to introduce the moderator for our panel on this issue, mary jordan is the editor of the "washington post" live. she's a pulitzer prize winning journalist who covered -- boy, there's been a couple of those

today -- covering stories from the white house to british politics to religious extremism in pakistan, and 14 years abroad as the post co-bureau chief in tokyo, mexico city, and london, she's written from over 40 countries on a wide variety of topics including award winning coverage of the asian financial crisis. she and her husband and colleague, won the 2003 pulitzer prize for the justice system. her work makes her particularly qualified to lead our discussion. let me briefly introduce other panelists. we're joined by francisco sanchez, under secretary at the u.s. department of commerce. leads the international trade administration which is assisting in the development of

u.s. trade policy and helps create jobs and economic growth by promoting u.s. companies. under secretary sanchez is widely recognized as an international expert on trade issues, and we're very fortunate to have him with us today. the next panelist is a breath of fresh air, jacksonville mayor brown, exports task force, a strong voice in the need for port investment and export promotion along with mayor brown, joined by minneapolis mayor arte -- and you are here. he was with me a few minutes ago at the white house and got back quickly. working closely with brookings on a metro export agenda, and speaking of brookings, joined by my friend, bruce, served in the

clinton administration, currently vice president of the brookings institution and founding director of the brookings institution policy program. we worked with him on a number of issues over the six years i've been a part of this organization, and he's been a great assistant, so let me turn over the discussion now to our moderator. >> thank you. thank you very much, mayor. washington postlive is the division of the "washington post" that organizing presidential debates and forums, and after 14 years of writing around the world in tokyo, mexico, and london, i've come back to washington and now run forums. this year, export has been a really hot topic, and, in fact, in chicago, l.a., and in washington, just in the last six months, we've organized conferences on exports, so i'm delighted, and thank you for

inviting me today. president obama, as everybody here knows, has a national goal to double exports in five years. as more businesses sell more including abroad, they have more money, and they have not only the money, but the need to hire more people, so basically what we'll talk about in the next 50 minutes is jobs. this is all about a strategy to create more jobs in america. for a long time, it was enough for american companies to sell to american consumers. american consumers, after all, really bought a lot of things. it no longer makes sense when billions of buyers live outside the borders. the grows middle class around the world wants american products and so we're going to speak here first. i'm going to ask each of the panelists to cake it off by --

kick it off, talk for a couple minutes, and then we'll go into questioning for ourselves. we'll go to the audience for your questions because this is a really important topic. you heard that i worked in 40 countries from indonesia to australia to cambodia and so many times i would see trade delegations go over there, kind of timidly because it's shocking that only 1% of american businesses export. 1%. talk about room to go. when they did go, only recently, returned from lone do two years ago, and virginia wine companies went to london to show their wine. now, this is a tough sell on a continent known for fine wines they thought, but they were doing this by push, the governor pushing saying there's a lot of drinkers abroad, and they want to test virginia wine. well, what's really interesting is this has taken off in

england. i don't know it's because the brits would rather buy wine from the former colonists opposed to the french, but for whatever reason, virginia wine sells in europe and even in british pubs. with that, i want to turn it over to secretary san sanchez for comment -- sanchez, and then we'll go down the line for kick off and begin in the session that's in the end all about jobs. >> great. thank you, mary. thank you for agreeing to host, what i think is a very important discussion here for everyone in the audience. i also want to thank mayor villaraigosa for his introduction and also for making this an issue on the mayor's agenda. i'm a self-proclaimed trade evangelist and prior to sitting at the pam, i found i'm in good company because i'm sitting with

at least three other trade evangelists as well. mayor brown, whom i'm very proud of, a 12-year friend from my home state of florida, worked with on the brookings initiative, and bruce who the department of commerce very proudly partners with on this initiative to localize what mary referred to as the national export initiative, to localize that to export initiatives. why does this topic matter to you? very simply, exports boost the economy, create business, and they support jobs. now, if that's not specific enough for you, i have a few statistics that i know mayor villaraigosa understands and mayor brown and others certainly understand. 95% of the world's consumers live outside the united states,

95%, and according to the imf, 85% of the projected world economic growth in the next five years will happen outside our borders. mary made reference to billions of consumers. these billions of consumers live in countries that now have an economic growth rate -- china growing now at 9%. it took a little dip, but 9% is still good i'd say. brazil has a strong growth rate, india, peru, country after country, but all of these countries have opportunities that we can't ignore. we can't just look across the street, across the state, or across the nation. we really do have to think of our market as a global marketplace. now, u.s. sea ports, ports play a very critical role in this

handling 78% of u.s. exports by tonnage and 76% of u.s. exports by value. u.s. shippers report that infrastructure and policy impediments at ports and in road and rail connections dramatically slow u.s. good movements resulting in lost sales and opportunities, so this is clearly something that we have to focus on. i'm very happy to report to you that the international trade administration that i have the privilege of overseeing last year entered into a partnership with the america's sea port organization and the idea between this is to work with sea ports to make sure we're offering opportunities, particularly the small and medium sized companies so they understand what's available, whether it's from federal resources or the local community, what's available to help them access these markets,

and i'm especially proud of the partnership that we have with brookings because the federal government as committed as we are, as committed as the president is, we cannot reach his goal of doubling exports alone. we have got to do this in partnerships with cities around the country, so i look forward to a robust discussion here and to take your questions on how the u.s. department of commerce and our sister agencies throughout the government can help you put together a robust export promotion program and make that number that mary made reference to, only 1% of american businesses exporting, increase that number. by the way, mary, there's another statistic that's troubling. of that 1%, 58% of those only export to one market, so if we can get the companies already exporting to one market to go to a second or third, can you

imagine the jobs you can create in your community? so i thank you for letting me be a part of this, and i look forward to the discussion. >> perfect. mayor brown? >> thank you, mary. i also want to thank our president, mayor villaraigosa, on his vision and commitment on reforming this, the mayors' metro export port task force, thank you for the leadership on that, and it's so important as secretary sanchez talked about the value in port and export. two, i want to commend my colleague who is here, who is going to speak to exports, but i look forward to working with him and also bruce and others. i believe that port and export is vital for economic growth and development in our cities. i think it would help small business, the backbone of the economy, and i think we have to position cities for the 21st

century and the global economy, really positioning ourselves in a market place to compete as a secretary talked about, and this is just the first, mary, of many conversations on this issue. we're going to have a national meeting in jacksonville, florida, on february 23-25. i look forward to seeing all of our colleagues coming to jacksonville for the national meeting, which i think is important. i also look forward to really accelerating and partnering with the brookings and others to really drill down on what's the relevant and value added for cities and mayors that take the -- to take the lead on working with the private sector which is the key, which is the engine of any of our communities to really foster that economic growth and development. i think what we do that, cities win. >> fabulous, thank you. >> i want to thank mayor villaraigosa for bringing this to us because it's a new dynamic

area to be in. the u.s. conference is in a real sweet spot having the mayor villaraigosa leading this, who wanted to do this, brookings leading the table, rockefeller foundation, jp morgan and chase leading this here. exports are great, but i have to go home and work on potholes, fix the budget, i've got no money, i've got to do other things. where does this fit on the agenda? well, if you really stop to look at this issue, as much as it seems like a second or third level issue for a mayor, it's also pretty much close to the number one thing we can do to grow jobs in the community because the numbers are so great, 95% of the consumers as you heard are from outside the country, only 1% of the economy comes from exports, but how do we really move the dial? well, one of the things i'd like us over the next few months to look at is lay out key things i believe mayors can be doing, and i think there's three big things

at the u.s. conference we can do, and under mayor brown's leadership in the subcommittee, i want to push these issues. the first is to get real data out there and really be a baseline for export data, and then move it forward. as the president asked, we move from 1% of imports to 2%. let's measure that 6789 there's a lot of data out there. i want the u.s. conference to do that data every year in partnership with brookings so everyone's looking to the u.s. conference for that issue. the second point i'd like us to do really is to really look at this idea of how to create a template at the local level, and how do we create something that a new mayor with all sorts of other things on their plate need to do, and so i think one of the things we want to look at, and i'll get to it in a brief second, is there's models emerging from the work at brookings. the third is to bring a mayor's perspective to this, and it should be the value add. siewfn, you know, india and china educating so many more

engineers. how many times do we talk about our communities globally from a deficit standpoint? let's turn that around. cities, more than any other part of america, are global hot houses. in minneapolis, we speak 100 languages, come from all over the world. minneapolis and st. paul and our city of rochester just an hour and a half away, mayor breedy really create the best opportunity for the our state sitting in the middle of the country to rapidly globalize our work force r and that's a mayor's perspective on all of this, so when you look at the way we do that in minneapolis, there's a summer's job strategy getting somalia kids into business speaking seven languages and moving forward. we're creating a global work force at the core of what we do. stop and dissect the history of your cities, and you'll recognize exports played a huge role already. minneapolis in the middle of the city, st. paul in the middle of the country, only natural water

fall of the mississippi, milling capitol of the world giving rise to general mills and other food giants helping investment in retail companies like best buy and target and innovation with 3m, megatronnic from the university that invested in the companies. every one of our communities has that. if you want to understand the final point i want to make, i believe export strategies are different in each of our cities, and what we need to do is take local assets and identify where's the silk road? where's the place most logical based on population and where companies export, based on where we have flights that are coming. the silk road connected east and west, and what is an american silk road that goes through cities? i was in china, the beginning of the end of the silk road no matter how you look at it, and as you look up the streets up the silk road, it feels different. global trade influenced china

and us, and as mayors, we have to move that up higher on the agenda, and i look forward to working with you on it. >> thank you, bruce? >> three questions here. why cities? why mayors? what to do? you know, if you think about trade, investment, exports, manufacturing, a lot of the conversation in the united states happened at the national scale or perhaps the state scale. it's almost like we delegated or relegated these critical issues only to the higher tier of the federal republic. the fact is the national economy is a network of city and metro economies, and the united states is the qint sensual urban nation. 84% of the population lives in cities. 91% of the gdp, and the top hundred metros are two-thirds of the population and three quarters of the gdp. why we are talking about china, india, and brazil is because

they are urbanizing. that's why they are growing. they are becoming more like us, and that opens enormous markets like mary and the under secretary said for american products, both goods and services. why mayors? exports cut across many different dimensions. they cut across many different gurs dicks. if you're going to export well, you need to connect the dots between advanced manufacturing and advanced services, skills training, infrastructure, particularly in the ports. mayors are really at the center. they are the hub of many of these sectors and clusters and constituencies, and as the federal government with programs and policies and tools tries to connect either to companies or to places, in many ways, mayors are the conduit. you're the place where the person and the institution that can pull this all together, the

coordinating role, very hard to do, particularly in a federal republic from the top down. last piece, what to do? i just want to build from the comments. i think mayors have to do several things, and this is just building from what we've been working on with l.a. and portland and syracuse and minneapolis-st. paul. first, make the case about exports and frankly trade and investment because for a long time, the u.s. has been very inward focused. we're a very large market, 310 million people. we have not had the lookout because domestic demand crippled after the recession and global demand is rising, particularly in the rising cities. we've got to make the case to look outside our borders smghts -- second, bring it down to your place. what denver exports is different from detroit. what minneapolis excels at is different from miami. in the prior economy, frankly, we lost that since of difference.

wal-mart is a wal-mart irrespective of where it is. same footprint, same goods, same products, that's why they are successful. talking about exports, talk about the special assets and advantages of different places. last piece, once you've made the case and basically with brookings and the u.s. conference and others, understood your starting point, then pull together that group of university, business, and unions and institutions to device that special and tailored strategy that works for you building with the incredible resources from the federal government, the states, and ultimately the private sector. i'll just end with one antedote. i had a session with the mayor of a financial institution not headwater -- headquartered in the united states, and they saw our work,

and he said welcome to the club. our perspective is an e mortgaging market on exports because you've been so intensely focused within your own borders w think you're a good bet, good investment for a growth trajectory over time. it took me time to recover from the emerging market comment, but it just shows you in the private sector, they see this as an upward trajectory. cities can channel the wave. this is the way to grow more jobs and better jobs. thank you. >> i just want to follow on what bruce said about, you know, what do the mayors do? what should you do? a couple thoughts i had is that again when i was abroad i would see, especially in asia this was true that when mayors and senators and governors lead trade delegation, it really does matter, especially in societies, the businessmen were really

aided by an elected official going abroad to china, korea, or another country because it gave them credence. when we get into the nitty-gritty is how do you identify what to sell abroad, and then how do you get a reliable partner abroad? i know the commerce department has a hundred offices around the world with people to go to so what a mayor can do along with leading delegations is being the conduit as you said linking them to resources at the federal government. as we kick off this part, just kind of getting into, okay, i'm from cleveland, ohio, and my brother is an economic development there, and obviously, he wants companies in cleveland to sell more goods, so when someone comes to him saying, well, i want to sell this to not just canada and mexico, but korea because we have a new free trade agreement with korea, colombia, and panama, making it easier to sell

abroad, what, you know, what do you do? one thought on what you sell abroad is everyone knows american beef and cars and medical devices are popular abroad. what i think has been interesting is i've gone around the country and the wild variety of made in america items that are popular abroad. for instance, there's a woman in l.a. who has made a huge business selling her lipstick. now, people srb she said to me that i thought that in china they made it cheaper or france, it would be more, you know, luxury item, but it's a huge, huge moneymaker for her. there's a woman in chicago who inadvertently was trying to sell something else, and she said something about christmas wrapping people that had merry christmas spelled wrong on it and how she could sell massive quantities of this irregular paper. she's now making millions of dollars selling this to india

like anything that says happy birthday or anything misspelled. there's almost -- you can't imagine. think broad about what people want out there, and with that, i think we'll open it up to talking about what sells abroad and, you know, how do you go about it? do you have -- if you're the mayor and somebody says, okay, get a website up, one of the things a lot of people talk about. okay. begin. >> well, so a couple of things. you mentioned a 23u of them. aviation. you might think, well, that's all well and good, but we can't have a boeing plant in every city in america. the truth is our aviation sector is not just airplanes. that's a very important part. aviation parts, component parts to an airplane, embra air is a brazilian company that makes regional and executive jets, and they are made in brazil by and large, although there's a florida plant and bringing in

parts through jacksonville, but i love embra air, even the part manufactured in brazil, and the reason i love it is because 60%-70% of each of the airplane are u.s. content, and everything from seats to avionics, you name it, it's coming from the united states, medical devices, mayor, you mentioned meta tronnics, we have a robust electronics plant. i toured a plant in montana about 45 minutes from big sky montana. if you've been a big sky, montana, it's not a big population. there's a company called west paul making environmentally sustainable pet product and they export to 25 countries b -- and that little company employed

150 people with good paying jobs. there's everything from aviation to environmentally sustainable pet products that are making their way into the global marketplace. a couple of things very quickly. the united states government has a number of services. mary mentioned we have offices all over the world, and we do, and they can provide market information for your companies, we have tailored programs for a very low fee to do customized work for a particular company. our sister agency, the xm bank and our sister agency, the sba, the small business administration, both have export loan guarantee programs to help facilitate sales. my colleague says he's in the sweet business. first time i heard that. i didn't know what he was talking about, but it made sense to me. through his guarantee loan programs, he ensures small and medium sized companies can sleep

at night when they make a sale overseas knowing they'll get paid. they are all programs offered by the federal government, and working with you and with the program that brookings has put together, we would welcome the opportunity to put a comprehensive export promotion program together that takes advantage of these federal programs. >> i'd like to talk to the two mayors about one very important piece of this is infrastructure. the, you know, the -- to be competitive with germany that is an export giant, you have to be quick about -- and efficient about exporting, and this other piece of the work for mayors it is to try to build up your infrastructure so it's quick to market, and i'd like to talk about that to either or both of you. >> sure. i think for me, making the case and making it plain for your citizens because it's not an issue that they tend to think about when they elect the mayor

or someone's running for mayor so i made the economic case, and let's take ports. my port is a $19 billion economic engine. it's created 65,000 jobs. the average al reignite is $44 -- salary is $44,000 a year. it's a huge economic impact in my city, and so my port needs to be dredged to expand and receive large ships, the panama canal, 2014, is going to be opened, and we need to expand, but we have challenges infrastructure wise, and my ceo, paul anderson, who i think is one of the best ceos in the country, we got together and said, you know, we need more funding to fix a couple of issues, challenges at our port, so one of the opportunities was a tiger grant, and i think every mayor here knows about tiger

grants. well, for the last two year, a applied and failed. this year we did the public-private partnership, which i'm big on. working with the private sector, and in this case, tsx, with the state, with the port and the city put together an application to make the case about why we need those funds for jack's port, to build the infrastructure, to fix -- to upgrade the port, to do more business, to export, and, you know, at the end of the day, we won. we got $10 million. we're able to get another $20 million from the state, and then the city kicks in, but making the economic case, making the value added that these are jobs, sustainable jobs, have district impact on the city, helps your tax bags, it just -- base, it just makes good business sense. the other example is working together to be competitive in

the marketplace. i work with the jacksonville chamber of commerce, the business community who's trying to do business and expand their base in the marketplace and compete. .. between the two locations to build those planes in jacksonville. why? because it is a strong mother to recount. to under 50,000 personnel.

huge economic impact, 14 billion in my city. the key is making the case, making sure that we have the infrastructure to expand into the business support. right now i think that in order to be competitive in the marketplace, exports and ports are eight for the cities. the same way that we view things in the domestic market about the untapped markets and served markets in the inner city is the same thing abroad. a great opportunity, great markets. we need the tools and resources to do it but my message as we have to work with the private sector, the business community to steer the engine. we can create that environment to grow jobs and economic development but it's all driven by the private sector. >> what is going through your port and where is it heading?

>> right now we are second when it comes to cars. automobiles, you know, fruits, vegetables, poetry going through the ports. >> what do you mean? >> poetry i was like wow, that's cool. [laughter] services are important, too. he would lead this task force. >> can i pick up on the other part of the infrastructure because the mayor did a great job talking about the physical infrastructure and that is a great piece of it. i think that for the mayor's we need to work on immediately that is the human infrastructure that is critical to making all of this work. the good news is none of us are starting from zero. we have a lot of people out there who are involved in trade, and the reality is the value is primarily going to be with the

maid and a small sized business. but in our community we have all these global companies doing all this work all around the globe. one of the things what we are working on is the bridge where we are taking people from the mayo clinic to have a great expertise in going to some specific part of india and then mentoring the small and emerging businesses and that is a really important part of it. the second thing we are doing is looking at the international alumni association. what we mean by that is any of our communities have a lot of people around the globe who used to live in our community. in minneapolis we have two stories of the target headquarters filled with programmers for india who come for two years and go back to india and now they are part of our sales force. more students, more chinese students have gone to the university of minnesota than any other in the country. each year the communities you find there are a lot of people around the globe who are assets

so getting that in place the final point is to make sure we don't trip all over each other there easily frozen out we have to realign of these resources. one of the roles the major complaint is to pull the federal groups together this is urgent and critical to support the president of a strategy of merging a different entities together so that when the export opportunities come into your community is small business can say who the hell do i start with, so that is a really important thing and should be focused on this month. >> follow that with if you are a major and your city has not done much in the export world how do you begin with is the first thing to do? >> the first thing is to understand that we are not just talking about manufacturing. we are also talking about advanced services but you look at the total picture of exports

from the united states about two-thirds or one-third of the services let's go back to cleveland for a second what has cleveland export it? it includes all the people coming to the cleveland clinic for advanced health care includes all of the students as you mentioned coming to case western or cleveland state for higher ed. it includes architecture and realistic, business and professional services. so, you need a full scope inventory on what you are treating with of the world. now i think the way to start frankly and it is different in different places, but we found it is particularly working with los angeles and some of the other cities is your universities. if you are lucky enough to have a federal reserve backing where some of chile and without a reserve bank they can provide you in addition to brookings and the u.s. conference with that data platform so you understand in general what exports and

trade look like but you understand the specificity and the provision of what you are good at. if at the end of the day with this is about is strengthening your strengths. that is just copycat thing everyone else understanding you have a position in the global economy you can build from and you have a set of trading relationships with particular countries, yes but also particular city is rising around the world. the last point and it gets to making the case about 20 years ago we began to talk about global cities and i think the conversation at that point is we must be talking about new york, tokyo, london, frankfurt, the financial hub almost a command commercial center of international finance. i would say every city and every metro in this room is a globalizing city in the metro to read you already export goods and services you already have very distinctive trading

partners which means you have a base to work from once you get your data and begin to work out your strategy and convene players in the city and natural we are probably working on this already but are not really coordinated or integrated and connecting the dots so to speak between goods and services and schools and infrastructure and exports. you have a fundamental role in that you are generalists and you can connect the dots between these elements. >> there's a small businessman in baltimore who's made millions of dollars by selling wires, why your baskets and wires to sit and he was saying that his -- he puts a double the internet and people from ever country, the internet is global comes to him and he started selling it abroad and then and got bigger and he started marketing it and mouthparts he's making a lot of

money selling baskets overseas than here. he was also talking about how the mayor's are increasingly putting on their website for people in their town like if you want information of exporting, go to the commerce department. there's a very simple things that you can do to lead people to the growing resources when this is a national priority. lee association here come hearing bruce talk about services that is a good starting place is to take inventory of what you may have because there may be sectors in your community you just don't think of as an export. terrorism being a very good example is a little counter intuitive because people are coming here instead of a product or service growing abroad and yet terrorism is our number one deutsch about that so much to the president obama was in

orlando strategy to increase travel and tourism. a couple of reasons we should care about that come international travelers on average spend about five to $6,000 per visit which is substantially more than domestic travel. we are a major destination for people all over the world. and those countries like china and brazil grow their middle class, they want to come here and drop the five or $6,000 here. so taking inventory of things as you may not immediately think of as an export is important and a second thing i want to point out that also may not be readily apparent and this is another initiative president obama put forward last week which was the idea of in sourcing and attracting the foreign direct investment. foreign direct investment in and of itself creates jobs. companies come and set up shops but they also increase exports.

toyota now has operations in at least i think three cities and this year they will export from here on hundred thousand units. 100,000 units made in the u.s.a. and sold abroad. and the one i like best, the example i like best of toyota is a bunch of those are going to korea. a japanese company making their automobiles here i think is actually a minivan and selling it to curry of them as a result of a free trade agreement. but i think taking inventory all the things you have to offer and including in the mix attracting foreign direct investment which might also be part of your export strategies. >> let's take your questions now. we have a floating microphone you can direct it to somebody who you are please, first and then direct your question.

>> good afternoon. my name is donna and i am the city administrator from niagara falls to new york and i'm very excited about hearing about in this book the municipal export plan and would like our cities on behalf of the mayor to be part of it because when you said tourism it's over 8 million a year and assisting the people in the national city and we understand exactly what you're talking about and would like to participate. can i say one thing about that i think is interesting is the tourism and the and of itself is critically important. there will be more people in the chinese middle class than all of the united states in a few years and that's really big and by the way the thing that the president is doing today in the reform is far and away the number one issue people are fascinated about in china because they want to travel the they also want to do something else. tourism and business are often

put together. this is really important and by the way tourism is a leader for business and that matters. i would also say one of the things i laugh about when people come to the u.s. is nobody realizes how big it is. so the idea is we are almost half a continent away from niagara falls but if someone can fly to an apples and then go to niagara falls with a couple different flights and that seemed kind of like one flight or sort of one trip for people in other places. we will go to europe and five countries and people will laugh the reality is orlando's disney world are all part of all of our infrastructure. the mayor from rochester an hour-and-a-half sob of minneapolis. when i was at the conference they just talked about minneapolis, st. paul and rochester being part of it as well as winnipeg and st. louis. so we are a global within the

country. >> i see one major with extensive experience in the international travel to bring jobs is the four president of the conference from akron ohio. >> i appreciate as many of you have said the commitment to talk about this because i believe it's important its international travel even though we can show the result for the direct investment that we concentrate on we co-sponsored with the chamber of export meeting from the small businesses. from the past. election i shouldn't be traveling or do that. so there is a downside. one thing though a couple points there needs to be a long-term commitment by any community. a mayor going over the first time he comes back or she you're going to have a microphone stuck in your face and say did you bring any business that if you bring them in your little

satchel, so people need to understand the commitment fees to be long-term but one of the things i like you talk about the comprehensiveness of this it is tourism, it is the foreign direct investment in there are communities i think the last number i say is too wondered $39 billion of investment last year and i tell people why should we not compete with minneapolis or jacksonville why should all those jobs go somewhere else? but there's one thing you didn't mention here and let me just say one other thing i've been an advocate of the mayor for 25 years, 39 years in this business as the counseling have always believed we do not become a service economy and move money around the problem is the lines get blurry and i don't care if the software is considered service. it doesn't matter we are selling something. we have to make it. the one thing about thomas friedman's comments the i totally disagree with it is it is not enough to have the idea

and so that somebody is making something in selling. you didn't mention any of the manufacturing policy for this country and it is something that has been talked about in this administration and i've talked about that term at least consistently for 20 years or more. it's different than a trade policy. there are differences and the distinction in developing trade policy, sorry, manufacturing policy, so we are supporting those companies with policies here that help, not completely protect them, but allow them to compete fairly in the world marketplace is something i would like one of you, maybe bruce and the under secretary to address. >> i will defer to you. my boss secretary john bryson has made promoting of of fans

manufacturing one of his top three priorities first much to my liking export promotion, and second, foreign direct investment. but an advanced manufacturing is very much linked to research and development. what mr. friedman talked about in the idea hit being created and tied to the universities is absolutely critical. the next step is that we also build it here. secretary grayson's term now is build it here, selling it everywhere. what are some of the things president obama is doing to support vigorously consistently reported in innovation tax credits he's encouraging tax policies that will allow companies that are abroad to be able to retain their profits and

bring them back here and invest them either in manufacturing or research and development that leads to manufacturing. all of these things are linked and you are absolutely right. services are very important. they will continue to be important but we cannot forget the importance of manufacturing to the economy. >> on your issue on travel, and it goes back to what i said is important to make the case that the value added to the economic impact because the voters don't understand, and so for me i work with the regional chamber of commerce in the council and have the business community to gup my travel and i can tell you in a tough economy the backdrop is at least in my city i had inherited a 58 million-dollar deficit, and so people don't want to see trouble they don't understand that stuff so i got my first experience as soon as i landed at the airport.

you went to brazil. but i made the case for it and the other thing i said the private sector pays for it. so that public-private partnership knowing the value is as ms. jordan said about traveling, making the case. they want to see the mayor. you have to show up. it has to be a priority. it's all about business and that is why the public-private partnership is key. and i want to commend the president for making this a top priority for the conference. this is so important for the growth of our city to be able to compete in the global economy so it can become a normal thing in a conversation no matter what city you are in. >> very briefly because we are running out of time. >> i just got word that what you are actually going to have a task force and a few minutes, so you can discuss this even further and because we are running all lead i'm going to call but that is okay with you

and i'm going to think them, the moderator mary jordan and our esteemed panel here. thank you so much. we couldn't be, you know, i think you've all got it figured out when you look at where all of the new markets are they are all side of the united states of america, and we have to focus on those new markets and this is a great way to do it. thank you so much. with us is somebody that needs no introduction either in the city of boston or the conference of mayors. we are lucky to have longline of past presidents who continue to serve as the mayor of their cities and one of them is, and tom is here to update you on the

new food policy task force that he will be chairing for the conference of mayors. there are a number of cities around the country that have been focused on this issue of the food policy and i have a food policy director in my office paula daniels and in san francisco and boston, chicago and a number of your cities are focused on this issue the mayor has graciously agreed to chair this policy task force and we will hear from him now. [applause] >> thank you very much mayor villaraigosa. i just killed his name but that's okay. >> let me just say very seriously thinks for the introduction and also mayors who

might be here for the first time at this meeting. i welcome you all to this organization. this organization can and will make a difference in the national policy if we work together on the issues that affect our cities from education to housing to other issues that might pertain to what we need in our state. to the issue of the food policy is an issue that's come up over the last couple of years and the city of washington has been on the front of this issue with the mayor of los angeles. i'm very pleased to share the task force on food policy along with the vice chair and the mayor in baltimore who is another leader in the food policy even though on the wrong side of the football game let me tell you. to work with the mayors around

the country that supports consumers and american cities. to support the revolution and the urban culture and school food and a growing number of entrepreneurs in our communities we will come back to you in in june with the new ideas for the food policy. let me tell you a little bit about what we've done in the city of boston. they've opened 26 new supermarkets in the city of boston. i'm especially proud of the shops in neighborhoods of growth hall and jackson square because people said the supermarkets wouldn't succeed in the inner city. well, look at them now and you will see they are thriving and contributing to the new revitalization of those neighborhoods. they came and they succeeded and now everyone else wants to be in

the inner city. it would also be accessible to people of all incomes that's where boston comes. the program doubles the dollars available to the food stamp recipients. you may have a similar program in your city. we also just opened one farmer's market in the city of boston. we also need to advocate for healthy eating in our city to read too many kids are overweight or obese and we've taken action to reverse the strength since we took the food it junk out of the machines at the boston public schools the data shows kids actually drink a lot less soda now than they did and that is one of my biggest political fights, taking so the out of the schools in boston. leggitt parents and teachers against me but you know mayors win and we did take the soda

machines out. last year boston public schools shared 35,000 pounds of locally produced foods to our students. we don't have all the answers. i look forward to working with all of you to develop a comprehensive urban food policy uscm that encourages parents and teachers to make the right choices and one that innovates new food startups of greenhouses to the neighborhood feud trucks. we need the city's hospitals and universities to meet local food sources a priority. we in the government for small-business friendly in terms of permitting and the zoning. so why thank the president for appointing me to this committee. i really appreciate that involvement and so i ask you all if you want to learn more about

this with my co-chair and myself, we have a meeting today at 4:30 this afternoon that will allow other ideas on how we are going to proceed so that when we go to orlando we will have a new food policy for the u.s. conference of mayors. thank you very much. [applause] >> okay. say it. villaraigosa. you got it. there you go. screwup my name. [laughter] know, i love it. we are very lucky to have him. give him a big hand. the great city of boston. and i see that our next panel is already formed here with us. our next session will be focused

on preventing game and use violence. we began this discussion during our los angeles leadership meeting where we focus on gang violence, prevention programs like our summer night lights initiative. in fact, some 50 mayors visited one of our parks. if you recall and across the country they are working on the same gang violence reduction strategies. this last fall the vice president mayor michael nutter of philadelphia convened an important discussion regarding violence, targeting african-american males and two weeks ago when he was inaugurated for his second term, he pledged to work with mayors around the country to deal with the proliferation of illegal

guns. i don't have to tell you that michael blumberg and the mayor have been focused on this issue and have had so many of the rest of us. now mayor nutter and i have been working closely together on these priorities and i am very pleased to have this discussion today. moderating the panel will be patrick mccarthy. became the president and ceo of the foundation an organization with the conference of mayors has a very strong partnership with. when he was the foundation senior vice president, patrick oversaw its work in number of areas including juvenile justice, youth development and the mental health initiative for urban children. on the panel along with mayor nutter is the new orleans mayor mitch andrew.

both have made reducing violence a top priority for their administration. and also on the panelist kathy, highly respected chief for the district of columbia and you heard those numbers yesterday. i think the recollection is the homicide rate down to 1963 levels. amazing. this is the police chief everybody. [applause] the cornerstone of the leadership has been her commitment to reducing violent crimes. by fostering a strong partnership in the community and the criminal-justice system resulting in a significant decrease in the number of homicides. and of course many of you remember them from the last meeting in los angeles. we are joined by the deputy

mayor and director of gaining a reduction and youth development. he has over 25 years of experience in the design, implementation and supervision of the delivery services to disadvantaged at risk youth. he is without question the architect of the summer lights program. let me now turn over the panel to patrick mccarthy. >> thank you. we are looking forward to a very lively discussion. the foundation does research and defense analysts across all issues that affect kids. after 25 years of research terrapin three things that just stand out as a child experiences them they are more likely to grow up with lousy outcomes including becoming involved with gangs and violence.

because we know that if a community is a good place to raise kids, it is a place where it is safe, where there are good schools, there is quality housing, parks, recreation, and that community is connected to employment and opportunity.

today's panel deals with some of the most challenging areas that in the city faces, how do we protect families, our youth from violence and that kind of social disruption that goes along with gangs and youth violence. thanks to all the panel members for being here today. we will start with asking each panel member to make a few brief comments and that there will be spun off -- some specific questions will dive into and go from my left over starting with mayor another. >> thank you, patrick. good afternoon, everyone. just by way of context, philadelphia is the largest city in america, a million and a half people, about 6400 police officers, which is fewer officers then when i was born in the first time four years ago. we have had some reduction in crime, but we have had some challenges, and i will talk to those in just a second. part of the reason why, and i think our president, the l.a. us a call for having this panel is

to have a more of a frank conversation above what is going on in many of our citizens of the urban america. a little context, in 2010, there were a little more than 13,000 murder victims in the united states of america. african-americans account for 50 percent of the total homicide victims and 85 percent of those victims were african american man. on average 16 yen people between the ages ten and 24 are murdered, 86 percent male. of the offenders caught, 16 percent of black men under the age of 24. earlier this week, of course, we celebrated martin luther king's birthday. his life, legacy. 85,000 philadelphia as came out on the day of service, the largest model with a king day service celebration in the country. of course his legacy was one of prep to file servers, personal responsibility, and hope.

watching, unfortunately, an entire generation of african-american men continue to fall behind. this next generation of children grow up in many senses without fathers to monocles, without any positive male role model in their life. we're watching many communities, unfortunately, crumble under the weight of incarceration, george, a literacy, and most of lot of violence. the question is, while we are watching, what are we doing? i want to call on all of our mayors to stand as an organization, as a group, to confront this violence and not put up with that any longer. this is a call to action, and we need a national discussion to start moving toward having a direct impact on this violence and as it affects our communities and families. a couple of actions and philadelphia. last year by reestablished what had been created 20 years ago by my predecessor, mayor goode, the

mayor's commission on african american males to comprehensively address the issues facing african-american man, not only with regard to crime and public safety, but also job training, health care services, education, and women of which entities. the commission has two major goals to my dressing comprehensively the issues surrounding this community if it to provide stooges program and up which entities for african-american men in philadelphia. as mayor villaraigosa also mentioned, last a torre i hosted an event in philadelphia called cities united of the national constitutional center. our good friend, marriage was there and a number of others. during that conference we understood that government, nonprofit, business, school committee leaders, and stakeholders if only to work together if -- if we are to help black men and boys succeed and thrive. this is not just a law enforcement issue, with a community-based issue. it must include education as a top priority as it were part of our public safety strategy in

our cities. the milliken graduation rates we also seek differences between and among the various races and ethnic groups. 4-year cohort high-school restoration read in philadelphia is 58%. white and asian males exceed this rate, 62 for white, 72 for asian males. black and latino males fall below the average, 51 percent for african-american and 42 percent for hispanic and latino. are looking at college graduation and education, only one in ten philadelphia high-school freshman will actually graduate from a 4-year college. of course some of those key factors with regard to the dropout rate are failing math, english, less than an 80%%% to five. 8 percent attendance rate. we have threonine 16 homicides in our city. that is still down from when i first came into office. 82 percent were killed with a firearm.

94 percent of the african-americans killed by firearms or males. year today, 21 murders in philadelphia. we ought to a terrible start this year, including last week, 30-year-old man shot up a vehicle with seven teenagers in that vehicle, killing three and one was shot in the neck. this was after a series of disputes among teenagers over facebook that have been going on since last summer which culminated with these seven young people being out at 10:30 p.m. showing up at the home of one of the individuals that they were arguing with, and this man, the stepmother of the other kid caught them in the alley in the vehicle not armed, never got out, and shot up the car. when no other risk factors, we know the stats. what we need to do, of course, is take action and take it head

on. i look forward to engaged conversation. we must be able to have these kinds of discussions without fear of retribution from particular constituencies or fear of criticism the we are only blaming the victims. this is about behavior and bad decision making. thank you for the opportunity. >> thank you, mayor. >> thank-you, there might, for those courageous comments. you know, all over america if you look at the numbers, some cities are better than others, but everyone has the problem. some have it worse than others, but it is not happening really well anywhere. and you looked at the numbers on the issue of murder which is obviously a subset of the overarching issues of violence, i would like to say a lot of times that if you're not say if you cannot be freak. everybody knows what happens to

a community, family, neighborhood, and the economy when people begin to feel unsafe, and that is an overarching issue, but the specific one that both mayor nutter and i have begun to speak more clearly about and more forcefully about are the number of deaths that have taken place on the american streets that are occurring between young african-american men for seemingly no reason at all. now, i'll give you some statistics in new orleans. three under and 43,000 people off. between 121300 police officers. we have a school system that we are reorganizing. we're working on the front end and the back end of this. we have double the funding for the recreation department to try to stop the kids from getting to where they don't need to be. we're working on innovative measures and our schools. we're doing everything that we think everyone else in the country is doing caramel borrowing from the police commission which we call the mass strategic command.

working and initiatives the settlers put in place. but let me see your these statistics into your mind. 199 murders in new orleans last year, 14 percent above the year before, from 1990 through today. we have always said 77 percent higher than the national average, but if you look around the country what you will see is that we have a higher rate than other places, and in the cities it is in poor, five, six, seven never read the follow very closely along the lines that he was talking about were you find poverty, family breakdown, and not just great pathways to prosperity in early childhood education, primary and secondary schools. in new orleans the victim information, 86 and a half percent of the victims are male. 91 percent african-americans and over half are under the age of 48. criminal history, 6% have a

prior felony, 33 have a prior arrest for illegal firearm possession. 53 percent unemployed. less talk about the perpetrators for minute. 95 percent of the purchase of mail. over the half of the perpetrators that are under 23. criminal history, 83 percent of the perpetrators have a prior felony. 40 percent have had a prior arrest for illegal firearm possession. over 55 per cent unemployed. 88 percent of them knew each other. now, that is a startling number or level of statistics. it is unconscionable, unacceptable and as i have to be that way. it can change from what we are seeing an alarming spike of the boldness. it was a couple of weeks ago. they shot at each other, and double what happened to find the head of a 2-year-old child.

he was killed. not long before that there was a young boy named jeremy who was not much older than that in the arms of his grandmother, and he got caught in the middle of gunfire. when we talk about the consequence of that kind of behavior on cities and on communities and on families, the devastation is almost hard to comprehend. want to congratulate and thank mayor nutter for taking this issue on. we have to speak directly to it. i don't think we can be afraid of it. there are examples, and you can hear some that we are using with success around the country that we need to find in the mirror. the federal, state and and local governments work together to focus very, very quickly on this issue, and i looked forward to further comments during the panel discussion. >> thank you. i'm going to give you just a little perspective on washington also. i have been with the department

for 21 years. my first year on the job we have ordered 79 murders in the city. our population was about 10% less than it is now. our homicide closure rate at the time was in the low 40%. most of my career in washington d.c. has been nasty things, the homicide capitol of the world, and the city of unsolved murders . thousands of unsolved cold cases and murders. what i'm going to talk about is, i don't have a magic bullet, and the 3-5 minute opening, i can only give you one aspect of what we have done here, what is the one aspect that should make everybody think about whatever it is the you are doing because we tend to of look at successful models and then emulate those models. new york city being one of the most famous, looking at how new york was so successful and reducing violent crime, two of

the most popular policing methods around the country were hot spot policing, you know, create a density map over most of their murders are and just a handful of neighborhoods. flood those neighborhoods with police and do zero tolerance. even the smallest of violations that is chargeable results in the rest. this is supported by kelly m. wilson he did the broken windows very many years ago, so it makes sense. i can tell you that success does not come in a one size fits all. and what is very successful in one place can be -- have completed the opposite impact somewhere else. i will give you the example in my opening comments. so, hotspots and zero tolerance policing in washington d.c. had the opposite effect for us. east of the river there are two police districts historic plea as long as i have been on that have accounted for at least 60 percent of all the mayors in

the city. too small patrol the streets. some of those neighborhoods were notorious, so we had always done the same thing. for the past 15 years with of the neighborhood with a lot of cops, as your tolerance. if you're around drinking a beer you better -- you're going to jail. the problem for us is, that does two things. one, would you for it is most of your victims also come from the same neighborhood. secondly, the people who have the information about who's doing the shooting also live in a never read, so when you're doing is your tolerance policing, who are you picking up been alienating? your residence, victims, and would this is. now they have no respect for the police, they have no reason to speak to the police. the other problem that i have that at the ever police department has or has had at some time -- okay. nobody likes the police because we go into this and reds and lock them down and lock everybody up. they don't like us, justice, or

want to talk to us. but even inside these organizations people that have affirmation that will help us prevent and solve crime won't talk to each other. inside, the knowledge of power. narcotics detectives that have forces that could help the homicide will call a homicide detective and share resources. everybody knows that. patrol officers who really know the most about everyone in the neighborhood and where their girlfriend lives and their grandmother lives of what started drive have a wealth of information, but there is no harm as a detective that will go talk to a uniform patrol officer and get that impression is clearly the homicide detective is superior. so that was my second problem. the problem was i have great technology and great analytical staff, but i cannot give the people in all the various different units that had the information to share it with the guy that can analyze it and use the technology to give us the ability to predict violence and stop it.

so that was the second challenge. the third big challenge really is a culture of policing nationwide, and i here police leaders say it, managers, and officers say it. we can't stop homicide. that is crap. we can and do, and until you change that culture you are not going to implement any kind of effective policing to reduce homicide. so, now the solution. i don't know if we have much light. at first slide that is up there is some of the analysis of the problem, and as you can see, guns, gangs and drugs is at the heart of all of our problems. if you're not a gay member, and remember, or toting a gun to my you will probably not get murdered in those cities. so the solution is the outside ring, which is, as you see, the orange and yellow, gathering intelligence, a community partnership, and connection. we could not get either one of those. hard to explain that. we alienated those folks predicted not do anything of the outside to solve the problems on the inside, so our solution was

to do the opposite. i did, in fact, used hot spots, looked at the areas in my neighborhood where the most violence was concentrated committees of the river. i did, and backs, dump a ton of resources, in fact, all of my resources. i had to change the mentality. but tomei comes to go out and do community policing camino, there are all kinds of reasons why that is just not a good strategy. second of all, no one really knows what committee pleasing is i told them i knew that to go out and develop sources. to begin developing sources is for narcotics. they lock people up and threatened to walk about and get them to cooperate. i wanted a different mentality, foot patrol officers and put them in the highest crime neighborhood and told them i needed to develop sources. how you go about developing sources, you get to know everyone in the neighboring countries them with respect. everyone you come across is sir or madam, and, you know, do the

exact opposite of zero tolerance i gave those officers hand-held devices, blackberries. they have access to their e-mail, the cell phone number. i pay for your phone and it would give the number of. they give the number to the old lady sitting on her porch finger beer at 9:00 a.m. incident dumping beer. and get to know people. a big anonymous police force is ever going to get information. people have to know somebody by name that they can call that the trusts to give information. that was the first. this second step is the some people will trust us anyway. you have to have means of getting information that everyone in the criminal justice system is supposed to. so i wanted to start an anonymous text to plan. everyone in homicide to massive oh, no, chief, you shouldn't do that. we can't use anonymous sources. we will have to run down these crazy leads. the united states attorney's office says we have been working of this for all these years.

you will just undo that. everybody, the sky was falling. don't do it. we did it anyway. we created an anonymous text-tip line because the people with the information to prevent some of the violence of the young people, and get people don't talk on telephones, they won't walk up to a cop until the something. if you give them a tax number, ours is 50411 kamala your here in my city if you need that, 50411. my tagline was give the 5-0 the 4-1-1. he ever visited the come in an unbelievable rate. did he tell the affirmation that we get on those text tips that have helped us and to evict guns, take shares of the streets, anticipate gang violence has been available. we have expanded, no-show usage stats. if we could go to the next slide. i can't show you statistically what would prevent, and that's frustrating, but of show you what we prevented and how we

have prevented them. so if you look at the top draft -- craft. my eyes are not that good. sorry. if you look at the top craft, this is our tax to apply in. i implemented in 2008 and we get $0.2,902 then. by the end of 2011 we are over 1200, a 300 percent increase. i can tell you the type of tips. is it simply unbelievable. if they're is a beef that wells up, we are getting names, addresses and descriptions on cars before the violence even starts, so that is an important part of it. the other graph that i can show that helps support that we have actually established those relationships and people to trust us now, on the bottom graf, that is our report payout. we have always had $25,000 reward for arrest that leads to -- information that leads to arrest and conviction.

that is not an anonymous tip that someone who is willing to come forward and be prepared to testify. and we could never get that in washington in d.c. nobody -- you would have a broad daylight shooting with 30 witnesses and no one will give have permission to police, much less testify. if you look at our increase in reward money coming in 2006 and seven more around $200,000 a year. we jumped up to 400,000 have remained above 400,000 sense. as a result of that, if we can go to the next slide, first of all, in the last three years our murders have been reduced by 40 supercenter. last year alone east of the river we reduced murders 56% in 1 year, and that is in the area of the city that has traditionally had a 60-plus percent of all of our borders because that is where we built those relationships and focused our effort. if you get the next slide, our homicide closure rate this year

is 95 percent. national average for cities our side is -- size is 66% in national average for a department of any size is in the low 60%. those numbers don't support that we have established connections, people just as demand some of those things that are successful other places are not so successful here. nothing else paints a better picture than those numbers. what that will leave you with just the thought that when you talk brought youth violence and you homicide and some of the other issues, there are many social issues, and i agree with everything that has been said. we have a huge problem with juvenile offenders and victims. last year we reduced the number of persons under the age of 18 arrested for murder only by 5 percent, but we reduced the number of victims by 55% because they're is a lot more that goes along with policing that arresting people. my philosophy has been, you need to have less crime, but you should do it with less arrests.

if you have less crime and less arrests, that is the goal and not measuring everything by statistics. so maybe there is some element of that you can use in your jurisdiction, and maybe there is some loss of the that it's better for your city, but my opinion has become a that is one of the most successful banks. [applause] >> i think the mayor has a quick question. >> thank you for that. that was spectacular. i wanted to ask you, from the time that used us to implement these new policies to the time you started to see meaningful results, how long did take to put it in place, wrap it up, and then see some meaningful and dramatic change? >> some things work faster than others. the decline was instant. once we get the tip line up, that was instant. marketed it pretty heavily with area people, so that went pretty well. changing the culture inside the organization and took a good two

years. it has to be zero tolerance for information sharing to the point where right now we finally get this down. right now if they're is a gunshot that is fired, i have a game conflict going on right now, and everyone in the department knows. but if they're is a gang conflicts going on and i did a gunshot in neighborhood one, within five minutes, our gain intelligence unit was deployed to both the neighborhoods where the gangs that are in conflict are a start knocking on doors of the rival big members and letting them know, we are just checking in. it takes away the and in leaflets is the retaliation despises enough time to go after the offenders. so forcing that information sharing, two years and i had to replace about five homicide commander is. >> i will suggest we move on. >> thank you.

in july of to does a seven hour mayor took a very bold step and created the mayor's office of gain reduction in use developments. most of this advisers thought he was treading -- this was not a very wise political thing to do. in a city with 400 games and 41,000 documents to gain members, and that's not just the county but the city of l.a. and we are 54 percent of all homicides are game-related. he not only created this whole, but he also brought in all of the funding for all of the gang prevention and care for intervention programs that were scattered throughout the city and created, in essence to an infrastructure that is now staffed by 30 full staff members , led by a deputy mayor with direct access and

accountability to the mayor, $24 million budget, and a very rigorous evaluation measures because 83 percent of our funding comes from the general fund. the problem has been defined repeatedly in this panel. this year we celebrated the second year of homicides being under 300. 298 homicides is too many. there are things we were doing that we are very proud of the white -- we think have been very effective, and i agree with mayor nutter, there is a lot of work that we still have to do, so i will share with you what my mandate is on behalf of the city, which is the comprehensive strategy that we implement to try to address this problem. we could go to the first slide please. there were three components of the comprehensive strategy that

we find extremely valuable. number one, is placed-based. we have a to divide 13 -- what we call the game-reduction in use development zones throughout the city, and i will give you a quick profile. relatively small, three and a half square miles on average. 40 percent of the population our youth under 18. 55 percent of foster care youth that attend schools in those zones, and 31 percent of youths on probation attend schools from those zones. roughly 30 percent of families live below the poverty line as compared to 19% in the rest of l.a. a median income of $30,000. these are for god communities, communities that we would rather ignore.

second component of the comprehensive strategy is that it is family-based. and by family-based, i don't mean that we focused on families to blame them for what was taking place, that we do need to recruit families to become our partners in resolving this issue. the issue of gang violence and the issue of youth who, they are insisting that developing a full-fledged agenda the as a gang member. family in the context of our comprehensive strategy is minimally three generations. so we're not talking about mom, dad, -- it will be a usual nuclear unit. that means we gaze across the city all of our strategy, and only three generations of family, and we recruit them to help us with this. in the last element of the strategy is that it is empirically driven. the history -- i think you have

per all the terms. l.a. is the gang capitol of the world among the mother ship, the belly of the beast, the city that export gains. most of the solutions that were applied prior were really driven by conventional wisdom, and not necessarily empirical evidence, not necessarily research, but conventional wisdom. what we mean by empirical evidence or empirically-driven comprehensive strategy is that not only do we need to rely on the research, the game then and make changes every single day, so we spent a lot of time on the ground figuring out how that data about gang numbers and who is allied with two changes on the day-to-day. the comprehensive strategy. the next slide. ..

>> these youth live in communities that are devastated by social conditions. secondary prevention for us means addressing those youth who are at the highest risk of becoming gang involved. now, we don't eyeball that anymore, we had researchers develop a tool, and each one of the 10-15-year-olds that receive services through our

comprehensive strategy have been identified to be at the highest risk of becoming gang involved. most of the research shows that less than 15% of youth in the worst of neighborhoods in l.a. become fully identified as a gang member. so we have to identify who that 15% is. our chief of police, probably one of our closest partners in this endeavor, maintains that 2-3% of that 15% are the actual shooters. intervention. so prevention means preventing these kids from becoming gang affiliated, gang identified. intervention for us refers to the idea of extracting and building an exit ramp for those who are already gang involved. in that aspect, we do use former fang members -- former gang members that have become certified, trained, fingerprinted and hired through the city of l.a. to actually

help us in tandem with law enforcement to engage those members of the community that are most likely to be victims of violence or perpetrators of violence. and, of course, the law enforcement component. um, which we do use the term "community policing." i do spend a lot of time with my partner, charles beck, at community meetings dealing with communities after, um, major takedowns, after officer-involved shootings, sometimes at basketball games, etc. there are three components of what we do that run across all the five prongs. what we call community and law enforcement engagement, those of us who have been in the field for a long time have attempted to do this work separate of law enforcement. it's just not very effective. um, and i think l.a. has tried

every strategy on the law enforcement end from kicking down doors and, um, you know, the hard knock approach and all of that, and that was not very effective. so for us law enforcement is a part of the community, um, so we develop strategies that cut across all of the prongs that we refer to as community law enforcement engagement strategies. the summer night lights program that you folks visited, um, it's gotten a lot of national attention. the value of the program as we know in l.a. that wednesday through saturday 7 p.m. to midnight from july 4th through labor day weekend youth violence spikes. starting in 2008 although we pie hotted -- piloted the program in 2003 and 2004, we started basically developing programmatic strategies that kept every stakeholder in the

community at recreational facilities at least until midnight. and when i say every stakeholder, i don't mean -- the definition of stakeholder means it includes those who are gang involved or gang affiliated. it is the only time during the year, um, in los angeles where gang injunctions are not enforced as long as people are participating in the program. um, again, it's place-based, particular neighborhoods during the time of the year when crime is likely to spike. and we've been doing that for four years. and then, of course, evaluation. we have to make sure that what we're doing is working, and if it's not working, we need to change courses. um, fortunately, i have the full support or of my boss so that if a strategy is not working, he is not bashful about changing the direction of that strategy. most of the time that i spend

with the boss is actually in these neighborhoods, i would say probably 85% of my meeting time with him is walking through these neighborhoods in the middle of the night. i want to give you some rough numbers about our evaluation, what seems to be effective. and, again, um, keep in mind that we have a lot of work to do, but we have started to collect data that tells us that we're, perhaps, on the right track. i'll start with the summer nights light program. this summer we had 74,000 visits to these sites. we fed 484,000 meals. we provided 1,614 jobs primarily to youth who would not be employed during the summer. we had a 35% reduction in gang-related part i crime. a 43% reduction in aggravated assaults and a 55% reduction in

shots fired which we're very excited about. if people shoot less, people get hit less. those numbers are from july 4th-labor day weekend, wednesday through saturday, 7 p.m. to midnight. at the intervention level, we do something different than many other cities which is i have a staff of 30 with the exception of the fiscal team, we're all on call 24/7, 365 days a year. so whenever there is a gang-related incident anywhere in the city, it is not just law enforcement that responds. um, there's a what we call a relational triangle that includes law enforcement response, gang intervention workers respond, and a representative -- either me or one of my staff members from the mayor's staff -- responds. that is 24/7, 365 days a year.

from april '09 to december of 2011, we responded in this format to 2,058 incidents. now, um, why do we do this? the issue of retaliation, um, we have not yet achieved a point where we can predict a homicide, but we've gotten fairly effective at reducing levels of retaliation. so, and that reduction, that strategy to reduce retaliation starts the minute there's an incident. >> where so mr. deputy mayor, what i'm going to suggest given the limited time we have, i was going to give the panel members an opportunity to ask a question of each other and, meanwhile, ask the folks in the room here to think about a question or an issue you want to raise. we got started a little bit late, so we're very tight on time. but anyone from the panel want to raise a question with any of

the other panel members? >> why don't we just -- >> do you want to go right to the -- that's fine. let me show, again, as in the last session if you have a question, please, raise your hand. there are microphones that will come to you when you raise your question. would you, please, just let us know who you are. so i see a hand here in the middle of the room. do we have a microphone? >> and want to make sure we also get our mayor stephanie rawlings-blake is the chair of our criminal social justice committee, and i know she's doing some exciting things in baltimore as well. want to make sure we hear from her. >> as a baltimorean, i would be quite remiss in not giving the representative of the winning team on saturday comes from. [laughter] we'll have this question first, and then we'll turn it over to mayor rawlings-blake. >> i'm here to congratulate you,

mike nutter, mayor nutter's no stranger to what we're doing in harrisburg. but to the chief of police, i commend you. it's amazing some of the things you talked about. without even knowing what you were doing, i started in 2010. we had homicides at -- 17 homicides in my first year, and we're now down to six. we had our first merchandise of this year, and that's because of smart policing. i took the cops out of cars and put them on the street, and it just went back to how i was raised when i noticed mr. friendly walking the neighborhoods building relationships and giving a sense of trust with the citizens. and they are talking to our police. we had 100% resolution in our homicides for 2011, every single homicide that occurred in 2010 we resolved in 2011, and that's because the cops got out there, started going to the bars, building relationships with the citizens and using those people to have a trust level with them, a level of confidence, and we

resolved those homicides. also, um, what i've done with getting the guns off the street since we're not getting help from our united states congress, i'm putting signs throughout the city saying mayor's illegal guns anonymous tipper. so anyone who knows about someone carrying an illegal gun, i ask them to tip us off, and we'll do the investigation to determine whether they're an illegal gun bearer. these signs are allowing people to call in anonymously and tell us where they know these guns are to get them off the street, so i just want to commend you in your efforts of smart policing and say that it is working. i had pushback, too, from the old guard. first-time woman mayor in the city of harrisburg, first african-american woman and police officers are 95% white, and they just had this culture inside, and i just kept pushing and using my authority and got some changing, now they're onboard, and we're really working well. we're also involved with

intervention as well. we just opened a new p.a.l.s. center after 40 years of not having it opened, our police officers are actively engaged in teaching our kids just how to be involved with school, they're being mentors, we took them out shopping for christmas, we raised money and gave the kids $100 to go out and shop to buy gifts for their parents, so these are some of the innovative things we're doing to not only get involved with the intervention, but the prevention as well, and our district attorney is very much involved with us. he's on the board, and so we have a very global effort with community people being involved with trying to get this crime under control. so thank you again for your leadership. >> thank you very much, madam mayor. mayor rawlings-blake? >> good afternoon and thank you for the opportunity. i'm looking forward to working as vice chair and, patrick, thank you very much for mentioning your hometown now.

baltimore, i'm certainly honored to have the annie e. casey foundation in baltimore, and thanks for rooting even though i'm scooting out very shortly was i have -- because i have to cement the bet with the ravens fan because he came up sporting a ravens purple tie, but that's another story. [laughter] everyone saw it, i'm not making it up. youth violence has been a problem in baltimore for many years, and we've taken a collaborative approach building on relationships and partnerships, and we've driven juvenile violence down in the last two years alone by 37%. since 2007 juvenile homicides are down nearly 50%. shootings down nearly 70 3r9. and -- 70%. and it is because we, just like mayor nutter advised me when i first became a mayor, if you see something that works in another city, steal it. so we have our safe streets initiative which is modeled off of cease fire. we have just, it's been very

successful, that model that i'm sure people are familiar with, and it is, we just announced with the help of federal funding an expansion into more neighborhoods. we have the diversion program that has the benefit of federal funding that pulls at-risk kids that have the first-time contact with the juvenile justice system for nonviability offenses -- nonviolent offenses. we're adding funding to that, those are federal funds. and all of these things are hang anything the balance. so as we work to collaborate on strategies, we also need to work to collaborate on lobbying to make sure that these funds, the juvenile justice funds, the burns money, the cops money aren't cut, that when, that as mayor smith said, that we make smart cuts so we can make sure we can continue to have a safe city. i'm looking forward to working with all of you. sorry i have to scoot out to make my bet, and hopefully you all are rooting for the ravens. thank you. >> thank you, madam mayor.

i see a hand towards the back here center. microphone over here? [inaudible conversations] >> this is john reilly from charleston, south carolina. quickly, a great panel and thank you all for so many wonderful ideas. and following up with some ideas from the chief of police in washington, something that we do that i think is easily replicable is we have our summer camp in the inner city for our kids, middle school students that there middle school principals recommend would benefit from some additional mentoring and support in the summer. and the police department runs it. it's on a very modest budget, we call it camp hope. from 5:30 in the afternoon until 9:00, lots of different activities and interesting and fun things for the kids when

they get their diploma at the end of the summer, they give the police officers a big hug. but the families and the community members are aware of what's going on, so we get far more cooperation from the neighborhoods where crimes occur. and the relationship with our police department which was good is even better, and it's a modest program, easy to do, doesn't cost much money, and the payoff is huge. >> let me just have on your point real quick, we do run summer camps here through camp brown. the positive programming for prevention especially in the summertime is critical. we take about 7,000 kids in the police department programs every year, but we couldn't do it -- my boss is not here today, but without the mayors' commitment to having all the other agencies support us which mayor gray has been wonderful at, department of parks and recreation and all the social service agencies, he has them support us so i don't have -- i mean, my cops work the

summer camps and the programs, but a lot of that stuff he has the other agencies pitch in and help which is a tremendous support mechanism for the families also. >> [inaudible] >> mayor? >> yes, if i might. i thank the mayor from baltimore for talking about seizing other, um, cities' initiatives which we have aggressively done. and i took to heart what the chief said about not one size fits all. and we have really tried to borrow from best practices. i know that boston and now baltimore, but chicago also was working on what they call cease fire. we've now expanded that into three cities. we're just beginning to do that, and we're hoping to see some meaningful results. patrick, i didn't want to be remiss in not mentioning the annie casey foundation. we worked with annie casey on juvenile justice reform, just an unbelievable partner in trying to get that system right. so i think the chief made a really good point. you want aggressive police, but you want to arrest the right

people and not the wrong people. and you want to have the capacity in your jails for the right people and not the wrong people. in louisiana our juvenile justice system was upside down, so we were actually putting the wrong kids in jail and training them how to be better criminals and not having the kind of services that we needed. and we continue to work on that in louisiana. unfortunately, new orleans at the time did not really opt into, the city, into that reform. so we're continuing to implement what we did on the statewide level. t been fantastic, and i thank you for your support. as stephanie said, it does require public resources, not for profit, you know, federal, state and local. and then again cross-agency cooperation because it's not just a policing issue. >> right. >> and i know a lot of the police officers say it just can't be us, and they're correct. thai got to do their job, but it's got to be everybody as well. >> i think i saw mayor kwan, could we get a microphone over here? >> i just wanted to thank los angeles, and i had sent a crew down after -- i don't know how many of you went this summer and went to antonio's old

neighborhood in boyle heights. i was a little skeptical. i said, is this like a show? because there were so many people in the park, right? i actually sort of lived out that way for a short time, and we went back and replicated oakland and a tough neighborhood in a park that had been taken over by a gang, and i didn't have the kind of money or the infrastructure i wanted to try it right away, so we picked six fridays, and we basically got hot dogs donated and got, we just started having turf dance contests and deejays and pretty soon by the end of summer we had 200 parents hanging out there, and that was the beauty of this. parents out there, in this case, black and latino parents who had not been talking to each other in a park that no one was using because they're afraid of being there. and by the end of summer the crime in that neighborhood, six fridays, nothing fancy, none of the staffing that he had, we hired teenagers to organize it which would have been better, and i'm looking to do that next

year. he had health groups come in and do nutrition displays, and they had all of these activities, and it made the park safe. and it didn't cost a lot of money. we're not, obviously, being here we've all gotten the message from the hill, we're not getting a lot of money, but i actually urge people to try it. i didn't have a lot of money, we only did it six fridays, the crime in those neighborhoods went down 50% by the end of summer because the parents got to know each other, right? and the kids began to feel safe, and we basically chased the gangs out of the park. and it didn't cost a lot of money. so i think these things, i stole from l.a. as quickly as i could, and the one question i do have is you do have an amazing program. you hire the kids, you get the food donated, could you tell us just a little bit more how you got the donations to get your program going? >> you know, part of that is also related to an infrastructure that's been create inside our city. we also have a deputy mayor of strategic partnerships whose entire function of that office

is to create private/public partnerships. from the night lights program, the one that your staff came to visit and you came to visit with the mayors, we do not have a public line item budget for it. meaning that we raise roughly between 2.5 and $3 westbound.5 r year to do that program. now, when your staff came to visit, we, in fact, went to some parks that were very successful, but we also went to some parks where we're having real difficulties with. and what was impressive to me, we actually spent 14 hours with your staff, um, is that they understood the very basic concept of what it takes to reduce violence through this approach. it really isn't about the hot dogs or some of the other fancy activities. it really is about community engagement. so i maintain that in these neighborhoods communities will

choose this type of program over body bags all the time. these are not communities that really would like to have violence in that community. so whatever resources we can bring in, the program can be done one day a week, three days a week or full blown how we do it. and for us it was, you know, we learned a lot by spending time with your staff. >> no, i think that's a terrific quote on which to end, that a community will choose this kind of engagement over body bags anytime. please join me in thanking the panel for the stimulating -- [applause] [inaudible conversations]

>> the u.s. conference of mayors has been meeting here in washington all week. tomorrow chicago mayor rahm emanuel and new york city mayor michael bloomberg will address the group. in a few moments, we're going to show you a session from yesterday with tom vilsack, but we wanted to let you know about some of the political coverage coming up on c-span. tonight at 9:30, president obama holds a campaign fundraiser at the apollo theater in new york. 9:30 eastern. and then tomorrow morning on washington journal, rick santorum will join us for viewer phone calls at 7:45 eastern also on c-span. >> back, now, to the u.s. conference of mayors. yesterday agriculture secretary tom vilsack addressed the group. he talked about biofuels and encouraging grocery stores to

sell locally-grown food. he was introduced by the mayor of santa ana, california. >> i was speaking to him a few moments ago, and he was mayor for five years of pleasant, iowa, i believe it was, mount pleasant, iowa. and i think once you're a mayor, you're always a mayor, you know? you kind of go around cities, and you're looking at streets, and you're looking at stores and residential neighborhoods and all that. but, so he is, you know, now secretary of agriculture, and they gave me a little bit of literature, and i just want to read one thing, and i want to turn it over to him so he can make remarks, and then i want this to be a dialogue to where we have a little bit of a question and answer and talk to him about some of the things that we're doing. but one thing in particular is that he entered into a partnership with the department of energy and the u.s. navy to invest up to $510 million during the next three years to produce advanced drop in aviation marine

biofuels to power the military and commercial transportation. so looking at our resources and department of agriculture in particular and seeing how can we maximize it on a long-term basis, you know, doing sound, you know, cost benefit an cease that -- an cease that integrate all the different elements that jennifer was talking about earlier, you know, it's just so sound and so, so important especially at a time like this when we're talking about creating jobs, we're talking about sound investments, we're talking about helping our country on sustainability issues and oil and defense and all. and so with that, um, you know, please, let's give him a warm welcome and start thinking about questions and all because i understand from his staff that you want to talk about 10, 15 minutes or so, then we're going to have about ten minutes for questions and answers. >> very good. >> so, secretary vilsack, please. [applause]

>> mayor, thanks very much. just a friendly suggestion on the corn, make sure that it's sweet corn and not field corn. [laughter] >> you may have been short changed? >> >> well, he might send you the corn that you could feed your livestock but not to your folks. [laughter] well, i appreciate the opportunity to speak to this group. i, obviously, have a fondness for those who are running the cities big and small. they have a very difficult job at a very difficult time, and i know that there are tremendous demands on all of your budgets. let me just really summarize the president's philosophy about where we go in terms of the economy and the role that usda and energy and biofuel production plays in that equation. simply stated, the president believes that we, obviously, need to be a federal government that will, over time, spend less

money. that is fairly clear. we've got to get our fiscal house in order. but as we spend, we need to invest wisely, and we need to invest in the opportunity to create an economy that gets back in the business of making and creating and innovating again which americans have done so well for so long. the reference to thomas edison is an indication of the kind of innovative history that we have in the united states. we need to get back into that business. because when we do, we then create and make and innovate products and services that the rest of the world wants and needs, so we then get back in the business of exporting, and we take our trade deficit, and we turn it into a surplus. that's what we've done in agriculture. today we have a record amount of ag exports. we export $137 billion of ag product to the rest of the world. it generates for every billion dollars of sales 8400 jobs, many of which may very well be in the cities that are represented here.

and it gives us a trade surplus in agriculture on one of the principle parts of our economy that actually has a trade surplus. um, we want to continue that. and so we've made a commitment at usa to a new energy -- usda to a new energy future and the important role that renewable energy and biomass and bio-based economies will play in creating that new economy. the first thing we did was to set up virtual research centers across the country in every region of the country linking our universities, our agricultural research service offices to focus on creating new ways to produce biofuel and bioenergy, new feedstocks moving away from a reliance on corn-based ethanol to expand significantly to include woody biomass, switchgrass, municipal waste, a wide variety of opportunities to reduce what you all are required at this point in time to landfill. it can help create new fuels and new energy. these research centers then, in

turn, have allowed us to identify opportunities where we are now providing resources to farmers around the country to help produce some of these alternative feedstocks. we call it the big cap program. we have roughly 50,000 acres enrolled in this program today, a maximum of 250,000 acres. your growing things like you're growing things having be converted into new fuels. we're also helping a number of smaller producers to get to the next stage, to get to commercial-sized operations, and we recently have announced support for a number of large-scale biorefineries that are, again, located throughout the country in all regions of the country. we want to make sure that this is representative, an industry that's representative of all aspects of america. the mayor was kind enough to talk about this unique partnership we have with the department of energy and navy. the department of defense and specifically navy has indicated that over time their desire is to commit to 50% of their fuel

needs being met by biofuel. it's a national security imperative. they are not interested in being reliant on a foreign source of power and energy, and so they have made a very serious and significant commitment, they've entered into a memorandum with us and the department of energy specifically to develop an aviation drop in fuel. this is not a blended fuel like ethanol that goes into cars and trucks today. this is actually a fuel that you literally drop into the tank, and a jet uses it or ship uses it. this is a unique partnership because it involves these three agencies pulling together roughly $510 million. these resources will be first and foremost used to help finance the construction of biorefineries that will convert non-food feed stocks into this drop-in fuel. then the navy has committed in advance to, essentially, purchasing the supply that's generated by these biorefineries which will make it easier for the refineries to gain investors

in commercial financing, to build the biorefineries. and then the usda will work with the producers to, basically, buy down the cost of the feedstock so that the pricing of this fuel will be competitive with other fuels so that the navy will not be paying more than it would otherwise pay. and as these refineries expand beyond the navy's needs, commercial aviation is also very interested in this. we had a meeting in chicago this week, earlier this week with representatives from boeing, united and honeywell. they are very, very interested. they, too, are interested in having 50% of their fuel supply over time being met by biofuel. why? one, because of the security aspect of it. they are not as interested just in the way the navy is of not being reliant on a foreign source of energy and, two, they believe that it will put them in a better position to meet the greenhouse gas restrictions that other countries, particularly in

europe, are currently imposing on air transportation. so it's in their best long-term interest to see this industry take hold. these biorefineries can be located anywhere, so as cities are looking at economic opportunity, as they're looking at their region that they are sort of the center of, they ought to give some consideration to working with their economic development officials in the counties surrounding them to see whether or not it's feasible to potentially be a, one of the locations of these three or four or five biorefineries that we hope to be able to finance. in addition, we are also heavily engaged in promote what we refer to as the bio-based economy. because not only fuel and energy can be produced from these feedstocks, but chemicals, polymers, fibers can also be produced. so there's a whole brand new industry that could be created from our agricultural richness, something that can be renewed, something that can be grown every year, something that will be better for the environment. and, again, reduce our reliance on foreign oil. we've gone from importing 60% of

oil in the united states to 52% in the last three years. the president has challenged us to reduce our imports by a third. that would be roughly 18%. that 18% is about equivalent to what we currently import from the middle east. and i think i would probably not get much disagreement around this table that it would be far better for us to create jobs here in america than it is necessarily to create opportunities someplace else. particularly in an area of the world that is not particularly stable right now. in addition to all of this, usda is also the responsible for labeling bio-based products for purchase by the federal government. would encourage all of you to take a look at our web site and our bio-preferred program to see whether or not there are opportunities within your cities in terms of the supplies and items that you purchase on an ongoing basis to see whether you might be able to support american agriculture or the agriculture in your district and. in your area that is providing the feedstock f be you will, for

these new bio-based products. we are also engaged in the rural communities in retrofitting homes and buildings to make them more energy efficient using some of the resources that we have through our programs. we are very much involved in financing windmills and solar and renewable energy opportunities in rural areas through our reprogram. we had over 22,000 projects that usda has financed and funded over the last three years in this renewable energy production arena. last point, we are working with the department of energy, the interior department and ferc to try to see if we can streamline the process by which transmission lines -- at least those relating to transmission lines over public lands -- can be permitted more quickly. we recognize and appreciate that you can produce all this renewable energy, but if you can't get it to the cities that need it because the transmission system is not equipped, then it does very little good to generate the power. so we're very much involved in this, and we have identified

roughly eight primary corridors that we think we can streamline and encourage a speedier process for approvals of these transmission lines, key areas that will link renewable energy production to the users and consumers of renewable energy. so usda is engaged in all of this, you may not have understood or appreciated that when you got this into this room. the usda is a department that we say is an every day, every way usds. there's virtually no issue that you can talk about today that we don't have some connection or involvement in, but certainly we are very heavily invested in this new opportunity, this new american bio-based economy that can be created with the assistance of our farmers, ranchers and producers. so, mayor, i think that's a very quick summary of some of the things that we're doing. that leaves, i think, sufficient time for you all -- >> it is a fantastic summary, and i think one that brings a lot of thoughts to our minds. i have a few questions, but before i go on to those, i'd

like to maybe go around the room a little bit and see what some of the questions are that my fellow mayors may have. let me jump in on one, and then, you know, maybe it'll stimulate more discussion. you talked earlier about there are eight corridors that you're trying to focus in on where we can administer capacity. would it be possible to get those eight corridors, you know, put maybe a link on our web site for the u.s. conference of mayors and share it with all our mayors? because there might be some that, hey, i'm in that corridor, and, you know, what do i do, etc., etc. any thoughts on that, mr. secretary? >> well, i think that information is available. um, i will double check and make sure that it's available through our web site, but i'm pretty sure it is at usda.gov. if you click on to the energy utility, rural utility service line, i'm sure we'll be able to link you up with a map that

shows where these corridors are. i will tell you that, you know, quite a number of them are in the western part of the united states because, obviously, there's a lot of public lands there, forested lands, blm lands. and in the past, you know, the attitude was, well, we try to avoid using public lands for this purpose. i think we're changing that attitude. we understand and appreciate the private sector feels that perhaps the onus was placed too much on them, and we also recognize that getting it through the process, through the public lands is sometimes very time consuming and a cumbersome process. so we've looked at ways in which we can identify primary agencies and giving them the responsibility to shepherd this process through, developing timelines and reducing the amount of time. what cities could do is work with your respective states to make sure that the regulatory process is in systems that are in your states are also streamlined as possible and that there's coordination. many of these transmission lines, obviously, go from one state to another.

if each state has a slightly different way of approaching transmission approvals, it complicates it and slows the process down. so to the degree we can streamline, to the degree we have some consistency in what factors we look at it, it'll make it easier for us to get these transmission lines built. >> city of denton, texas, we're the northern bastion of civilization until you get to oklahoma. [laughter] and we have a lot of agricultural areas around, but we're the northern part of the metroplex. my question is we also have our own public utility, denton municipal electric, and we have 40% of our electricity now for our city of 125,000-plus and two universities, 40% of all our energy comes from wind now. we partner up with nextair

energy, developed a wind farm where we have 72 generating windmills just north of the city. and my question is, can the department of -- you mentioned that usda has for agricultural areas you work with folks for wind-generated power. would that work in a ownership type arrangement with a municipality where we might partner with agricultural areas to develop additional wind capacity that we could sell to them? because we could do that. i've never thought of it, we just entered into this realm two years ago. so that's my question. >> congress has, basically, restricted the geographic areas in which usda can invest resources to insure that its primary focus is on rural areas. having said that, we have a rural utilities service part, portfolio of our operation that basically provides low-cost

financing for the construction of wind farms, etc., and electric generation. if those wind farms and those turbines are located in rural areas, there's no reason why we couldn't have the kind of partnership that you're talking about. it isn't so much where the energy's used, it's where the energy is generated, it is where we can invest. and so we'd encourage you to take a look again at our web site, usda.gov, under the rural utilities service. that will give you information about the programs that are available. this is a little far afield from energy, but one of the things we're also trying to do is to connect these rural communities with broadband and the rural utilities service is also engaged and involved in providing access to resources for distance learning, for telemedicine and for connecting communities. so there's a lot of activity that goes on through usda that can support regional economic development. and one of the things i would

encourage, we have roughly 50 regions that we've identified that have self-identified themselves as economic regions. this can be multiple counties, it can be, actually, multiple state locations working to develop a strategic plan on how they might be able to grow the regional economy. and certainly, a large city like yours would benefit from a strategy that encourages surrounding communities to contribute to a regional economic development strategy. >> um, i'm going to call on mayor fox next, but it's important we use the microphones because i understand that we're on c-span. so this is going to be very interesting as others, you know, listen to this discussion and, therefore, the microphones are very important. mayor fox? >> yes, thank you, mr. chair, and also thank you, secretary vilsack. in my community one of the things that is becoming more of a topic is the concept of local food, and partly as a sustainability initiative the

idea that when you have food that is moving for thousands of miles to get to the plate, it has an impact on the environment and on energy consumption. i'm wondering whether there are initiatives through us, the a to promote local food and to -- usda to promote local food and to help connect urban areas to some of the food sources that are closer. >> mayor, there are a couple things i would say in response to that. first, we have a program which we refer to as know your farmer, know your food. it's not actually a program, it's sort of a overarching theme of helping to create local and regional food systems. we're using our rural development, economic development tools, our business and industry development tools to create the infrastructure that allows cold storage, warehousing, mobile slaughter units and the like to help create critical mass of locally-produced food so that schools, institutional purchasers of food can do exactly what you've suggested.

we've also substantially increased our commitment to farmers' markets because that's another outlet, another market opportunity. we now have over 7200 farmers' markets, we've seen an increase as well in winter farmers' markets, and that's been a result of our, a concerted effort to promote the financing in assisting farmers' markets, even in urban centers. so know your farmer, know your food. again, if you go to our web site, you'll see a little icon that's directly connect today that initiative. the third thing i would say is that we are also cognizant of the food desert issue which is prevalent in many major urban centers and also, tragically, in rural areas as well. so we have been working with the treasury department and others to put together a package of financing through a healthy financing initiative where we use our resources to try to encourage the location of smaller-scale but full-service grocery stores in urban centers. we know that there are a number

of grocery chains that are now expressing real interest in creating this opportunity. and i would encourage all of the mayors here who might have a food desert in their city to consider reaching out to the, whatever the predominant grocery store chain is in your community and suggest to them that they might consider in lieu of a check which is what oftentimes you get from corporate foundations, that they consider the operation of a grocery store at no profit, that that would be a contribution that they could make to a community by establishing a small, right-sized grocery store that would provide fruits and vegetables to folks and provide a convenient location for folks. and if they operated it at no profit, at a break even, then they might have an opportunity to actually lower the costs so that lower income families would be in a position to access that grocery store. i would also say that, you know, this is a little bit far afield

from your question, but we've also made a concerted effort to reach out to schools to encourage them as we improve the school lunch and school breakfast program from a nutritional standpoint to locate and to consider what's being grown and raised in the area around the school within a 50-100-mile radius. and, again, using our economic development tools to build the food hub that would allow an aggregation of enough of that to be able to provide consistent supply. so there are quite a number of initiatives in our, in our department as well as the treasury department you might want to take a look at. hhs also has a smaller program as well. >> thank you. we have time for two more questions, but before that mayor davis, you came in, i believe, after we got started. if you'd like to introduce yourself, please, and say a little bit something about your city. >> mayor davis from the city of -- [inaudible] thank you. from vallejo, california, you guys probably have heard that name.

we are now out of bankruptcy. we have passed -- [laughter] successfully, we have just hired a new city manager that we stole from concord, california -- [laughter] and we have passed a tax measure to help us boost our economy, and we're moving ahead. we're in great shape, have our contracts in order, and the city is getting ready to move. good to be here. >> congratulations. mayor osserman, please. >> thank you very much. thank you, mayor, and thank you, mr. secretary. so i hear about your programs, rural america, from my sister, melanie parker. you've been working with her on some other things in montana. your name came up at the dinner table just last week. so, yeah. so i hear all about this wonderful stuff you're doing. but i've got a question for you much broader than that. um, you know, we talk about, um, crumbling infrastructure in this country not just water,

wastewater, storm water, energy, improvements to the grid. you mentioned communications. um, you know, roads and bridges. and what do you think the real opportunities are, are there for a really, a true infrastructure bank in this country to fund these types of much-needed crumbling infrastructure? and, quite frankly, give us the opportunity to put people to work? >> mayor, that's a good question. um, you know, to a certain extent let me just comment that we do make a fairly concerted effort at usda to provide resources for some of that basic infrastructure you just mentioned. we have a wastewater, sewer treatment program, we've got a broadband prm, electric generation program all through our rural utilities services. having said that, it's fairly clear that the need for infrastructure improvement far exceeds what government currently has available to it. and what we need to be able to do is figure out ways in which we can tap resources outside of

government and leverage government resources. that's the reason why i sat down with a number of investors and a number of folks who have large pension programs including calpers to ask whether or not we could partner. if we could identify projects at usda that we were aware of, would they potentially be interested in investing in those products? they could do it through an infrastructure bank or just as individual investments. but we clearly need to look for ways in which we can leverage our resources and access, um, large sums of money that are available, that want to be placed in stable investments, certainly infrastructure at the local level, state level is one solid, stable investment that could be made with a relatively reasonable return given the current circumstance. as it relates to the chances of that happening, um, you know, i'd like to be optimistic, and my hope is that at some point in time folks in congress

understand the president has proposed an infrastructure bank, he has supported an infrastructure bank, he has suggested with the american jobs act that we create a first start at this. um, we haven't been able to get that done through congress yet, but we're going to continue to work on it because the focus of this president and his administration is on jobs. and it's, obviously, a great job creator. >> thank you very much. >> thank you, mr. secretary. i think the final question is going to come from frank, please. >> i've got to go. >> you've got to go? sorry, frank. you almost got there. [laughter] you got very close. >> thank you, mr. mr. secretaryr taking yet another moment to speak. i'm fascinated and have been watching closely all the work that's been done and your thought about local foods as a follow up to the question a moment ago and also looking at our state in iowa and knowing that we don't lose a lot of,

well, as you pointed out soybeanses or corn that people actually eat. we shove it through something else, and it becomes something else. do we have a model that you're thinking of in cooperation with other agencies and departments where we shrink that model from where our food sources come from? i mean, iowa i think most people would say a majority of our food comes from over 1500 miles away. i've been into some of our local chain groceries that you may be familiar with, and and i am astounded in walking through the fruit aisle and discovering that not only is not one apple coming from iowa, i was in there one day, and not one apple came from the united states. and so i'm trying to figure out how do we work together to make

this country and our state and our cities sustainable and have a model as we talk about energy and food and fuel and shipping and how we move goods and services around, what are we doing, and are you looking at that model, and do you have any statistics that says that that number from 1500 we're able to shrink it 20% or 40% to maybe only 900 miles away or something? i mean, how are you judging and looking at those issues? >> we are very interested in a recent trend that's taking place in agriculture which is that individuals in their 20s, late 20s, early 30s in this country have become more interested in getting back into farming. we're seeing a fairly significant trend of young people wanting to get into farming. and the reality is that farming today is highly

capital-intensive if you're looking at commercial-sized operations, and so many opportunities, actually, are in smaller-scale operations. so one thing that the council of mayors could do is for the, perhaps, for the first time extend your interest in the farm bill to not just the nutrition assistance portion of it which is important to your constituents, but also to this issue. because congress is about to engage in a discussion of the 2012 farm bill, and we will have to address this issue of beginning farmers and how we can encourage young people to get in the business of farming because the overall age of farmers in the country is rapidly aging. secondly, there is a growing interest in direct to consumer sales. we're seeing a significant increase in the amount of activity in this space to the point where it's now a multiple

billion dollar or industry. and it's, in my view, a good complement to production and commercial-sized-scale agriculture. it complements it. and so, you know, we want to continue to work to create new market opportunities whether it's in increasing farmers' markets, whether it's actually encouraging schools to enter into contracts. there's a good operation in new mexico which i'll get you information on which is a pretty good food hub that, basically, collects food from local producers. you'd be surprised, there's probably quite a bit of activity in the space of iowa that just, perhaps, is not coordinated. i know secretary northey's working on this, that you could actually meet some of the institutional needs of your school, for example, in des moines. that would be a good project. so i think there's more in this space than you would imagine. let me just close with one other

observation. the farmers, ranchers and producers of this country, with due respect to the folks in this room, are absolutely taken for granted and not given an education presentation of appreciation -- expression of appreciation from this country for the reason they deserve. and the reason i say that is for the following three reasons. one, 86% of what we consume in this country is grown and raised in this country. 86%. which means that we are, for all intents and purposes, a food-secure nation which is to say that we are capable of producing that which we need to feed our people. do not take that fact for granted because that is not true in most of the major countries around the world. they are dependent on importing their food. secondly, when your constituents walk out of your local grocery store, they walk out with far more in their pocket from their paycheck than most people in the developed world. we spend less than 10% of our paychecks for food.

in most developed countries, it's 15, 20, 25% which means that all of your citizens have opportunities to buy nicer cars or live in a nicer house or take a vacation or have a little extra flexibility with that paycheck than anybody else in the world. and that is a result, in part, from the extraordinary productivity of american farmers, ranchers and producers. and the third piece of this which is often not recognized, and i know i'm speaking to mostly larger city mayors, but rural america represents just 16% of america's population but nearly 40% of our military comes from those small towns. so not only do these fine people provide food for your families, but they're also willing to send their sons and daughters to places far, far away and put themselves at risk to protect the liberties and freedoms that we take sometimes for granted in this country. so it's a place that is not fully appreciated, not fully recognized, and it's important that mayors of communities and cities of the sizes of the ones represented around this table

really understand that rural america does matter. and that your cities are dependent on what's happening in rural america. you're going to see more of your fuel produced there, you're going to see more of your energy produced there, you're going to see economic opportunity with bio-based economies, plants and facilities that will likely be located in your cities providing the feedstock for new job opportunities and a new american economy. so i, mayor, i appreciate the opportunity to be here. i hope i didn't overstay my time -- >> no, no, you did not. you did not overstay whatsoever. as a matter of fact, i want to ask you something and see if mayor cownie might be willing to do this, and that is i wanted to ask you if you'd be willing to head up an ad hoc committee between now and whenever this 2012 farm bill is put together. if it hasn't occurred by the summer, i'm thinking we could have a resolution before the energy committee because this impacts energy that might push us in the right direction, and if you're working with the secretary and if there is

language that he needs in a bill that we could all get behind, we've done this before. and this might actually be something that we can get done. sometimes it's difficult to come to washington and ask for money because everybody's, you know, very tight, but, you know, he's offering us something that can help a lot of communities across this country and help the country as a whole. so, frank, if you're willing to do that, you know, you're very articulate, and you understand this issue well. and if you can track it, i know staff will work with you, and maybe we can get something done along the lines that he mentioned. >> i'd love to work with the secretary, and do you have any idea, mr. secretary, when the bill might roll out? >> well, i just asked the congressman sitting next to me -- [laughter] when that would be, and honestly, there will be conversations and discussions the first part of this year about it. and i think now's a very good time to get engaged.

in fact, it would make sense for the conference on mayors to ask for an opportunity to, perhaps, visit with the house and senate leadership on the ag committee and, basically, provide your input. jennifer, where are you? right there. jennifer is our intergovernmental affairs person, and she's the key person for -- in my world -- mayor, that you should get jennifer's contact information if you don't have it, and we will coordinate with her and you. >> and i'll be in your office next week hoping that you will, we've got an urban forestry meeting, hopefully we'll -- >> okay. [laughter] >> you're not going to get away. >> he also knows where i live. >> he knows where you live. that's why i appointed him. [laughter] that's why he's the right man for the job. thank you very much, mr. secretary. [applause] i now am going to turn things

over to mayor brian waller from new jersey because he is the person responsible for our next special guest that he's going to introduce and give a proper introduction to. >> thank you, mayor plead doe. it gives me great pleasure on behalf of the residents of the sixth congressional district and the dais to introduce the congressman represents our two towns, especially after redistricting. and congressman pallone's a 12-term congressman who serves on the energy committee. >> correct. >> and congressman pallone has been a leader on the environment for all those years and, also, on the energy issues and is at the forefront with our home state senator, senator menendez, in fighting for the energy block grant program which many of the towns across this dais here today were able to receive direct-funded grants for energy assistance and direct block

grants. so, with that, i'd like to thank congressman pallone for spending some time down here with the united states council of mayors. and with that, we're going to get you the mic over here. >> thank you, mayor. and i, i won't take up a lot of your time because i think the time allotted for this panel, i guess, is probably near the end. and i want to thank both mayor waller and, also, my mayor from edison for being here. i see some of the other mayors from my district or from the state of new jersey were around as well. i know that nobody expected me to talk about agriculture, and i wasn't planning on it, but i couldn't help it listening to the previous conversation because if i could just digress a minute and say that, you know, new jersey is the garden state. people don't really think of us that bay way, but we pride ourselves on being the garden state. we're also the most densely populated state, and we have lost a lot of our agricultural production and land over the years because of the, youno